noPod

“Hey Ralph. How come you don’t wear your iPod anymore?,” a friend asks as I reach the halfway point of my time on the elliptical machine at the Wallingford YMCA.
He gets on the elliptical next to mine as I tell him I keep forgetting to bring my iPod to the gym.
“I think I’m telling myself that I don’t like listening to it when I work out.”
“I never wear one,” replied Greg, who is about my age.
At any given moment, more than half the people working out at the Y are using an iPod or other audio device. With the under 30 set, it is almost 100 percent. Even the young guys lifting massive amounts of free weights have ear buds in. That scares me because I was taught that when you are lifting free weights you need to be alert at all times.

For a while, it seemed that the loud music from my iPod was motivating me to work out harder and longer. It also seemed to help me focus because one of the issues when you work out without a trainer or a partner is concentrating on working as hard as you can and not letting your mind wander.
What bothered me about having ear buds in all the time was that I noticed people, especially those close to my age, were not coming over to say hello and chat for a minute. Those of us not raised in a world where people simultaneously watch TV, do their homework and send text messages assume that if you have ear buds in you can’t or don’t want to say hello.
About six months back, in an effort to be more efficient, I started listening to audio books while working out. The free technology was kind of clunky (it was hard to pause, fast forward or reverse) so I gave up pretty quickly although better technology exists.
Even without an iPod, there is always music playing on the Y sound system and eight TV’s hanging from the ceiling, mostly tuned to the news and sporting events. No sound, of course.

Greg and I chat about work, family and sports and after a brief pause he points up at the breaking news flash that North Carolina has lost a basketball game to a team most people never heard of. Just before he had gotten on the elliptical next to mine I was feeling tired and thinking about cutting my workout short. When he got off, I looked down and saw I had just a few minutes to go.
“I don’t think I would have made it without him,” I thought.

Let me know what you think.