Running - Music to Lose Weight By

It's not just what you hear, but how you hear it...

One thing that can make a walk or run more enjoyable is music. No, the pounds don't seem to come off any faster, but I've noticed that my pace increases if I have tunes playing. When I was running heavily back in the day I carried an indestructible Sears cassette-playing Walkman-clone that took 4 double-A batteries and sounded awesome - all for about $14.99 if I remember correctly. If a person was to steal it off the front seat of my Monza in 1989, what kind of music would they have heard? Scorpions, Winger, Soundgarden, Green River, Led Zeppelin, Queensryche to name a few. That player served me for about five years until even the duct tape couldn't keep it together any longer. How far we've come in equipment, even if the spirit of music is the same.

Thankfully my cellphone - which doubles as my defacto camera most days - also functions as a music player as well. It's amazing to think that we listen to computer files. When you're old enough like me to remember - and have used - reel to reel tapes or long-play records, technology can't be anything but amazing. Currently my phone is filled with Italian Metal, 80s kings like Night Ranger, and Spanish-speaking French band The Juanitos. The phone even has a speakerphone setting, but sounds fine if you have the right ear phones plugged in.

But how about those stylish ear bud headphones you can use while exercising? You know the ones...more fashion statement and less sound? They look so sleak, so snazzy...yet they embody a pure evil that can only be summoned by manipulating your volume control. Sadly they all seem to be filled with tinny midrange layered with shrill treble. By shrill I mean the kind of sound that will remove plaque from your teeth. Never mind that they drop straight out of my ears unless I tape them in (yeah...there's your visual today). The sound quality has such an adverse impact that it can ruin the character of a song in short order and in perpetuity. That's why I will only listen to Tears For Fears on ear buds, because that band is already ruined for me.

Plainly stated, I want bass response. I want my ears to thump and to feel the bass tones in the center of my head. It's unfathomable that a generation of music lovers is allegedly satisfied with the noxious sounds of bands heard through nasty treble and midrange. Maybe the Seventies Child in me simply needs what many no longer understand - to wrap my ears in a big pair of phones and feel bass in my head on a song like Slow Ride. It started with my first pair of KOSS headphones in 1976, and hasn't let up since. In 1977 I even had a set of AM/FM Radio Headphones that ran off a 9V battery, and were purchased from Radio Shack from money I got digging up the back yard for my parents' garden. They were huge, but made the one-mile walk to junior high a bit more bearable. At least the walk was good; junior high sucked.

So when I began my journey back to 200 pounds, music came along for the run. But like many other things in our home, my favorite headphones were set aside "for safe keeping" - only to have them disappear. I suspect someday I'll find them, along with 470 single socks and a Led Zeppelin CD I haven't seen since 1997. But until that glorious day, my only choices for listening to music while on my walks were the cheap tinny buds that would cause Barney The Dinosaur to kill, or the Pro Studio headphones shown in the picture above.

Clearly I chose sound quality, even if they make me look like Jacques Cousteau's Sonar Operator.

I'll say this, despite looking like a couple of large cinnamon buns on my ears, these headphones rock. There's enough bass response to shake the Titanic to the surface. If I wasn't battling a hill on my loop, I would close my eyes and be 14 again listening to Supertramp in bed. Nothing like a good set of headphones to shave 30 years off your life - that is if you have 30 to shave. Of course, these are not designed for outdoor use, so I need to get myself another pair that will be suitable for the coming Winter weather.

I encourage anyone young enough to think that the Walkman and over-the-head earphones are ancient history to try a decent set of phones on an iPod. It will make more difference than you can imagine!