This morning, as I embarked on my first day of genuine exercise, music was both a motivator and a timekeeper for me during the five-minute daily required stretch period I talked about yesterday.  I opened iTunes and sorted by track length, then stretched through the entirety of Spoon’s “My Mathematical Mind.” Other songs right around the 5:00 mark:

  • Ryan Adams - La Cienaga Just Smiled
  • MGMT - Kids
  • Badly Drawn Boy - Take the Glory
  • The Killers - All These Things That I’ve Done
  • The Postal Service - We Will Become Silhouettes
  • Cake - I Will Survive (this is a good motivator, too!)
  • Beastie Boys - Paul Revere
  • Geto Boys - Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangsta (from Office Space)

After that, I started with a two-mile walk.  Tomorrow I plan to walk 2.1 miles, then the next day 2.2, until I get up to four miles every morning.  Ideally I would have gotten my heart rate up to 155, but because walking isn’t too strenuous an activity, I topped out at about 128, which is 65% of my maximum heart rate instead of the recommended 80%, but I feel like I have to start slowly to avoid injuring myself.

So what’s the best music out there for a workout?  If you ask me, it’s Girl Talk’s recent mix album Feed the Animals. Best of all, you can get it for FREE at the Girl Talk website.  Just go here and enter your contribution (which can be anything, even $0.00) and download the mp3s. It’s an upbeat mix of TONS of songs that somehow flow together perfectly.  If you try it out and like it, or you have another good workout music suggestion, please let me know in the comments.

Happy workout!