At this current time, as you know, I’m limited to doing workouts that don’t cause pain in my idiot of a right foot. This means that I can do virtually any workout…except run. Well, let me clarify. I can run, but roundabout the three-mile mark (actually, exactly at the three-mile mark most times as of late) my foot starts to hurt and I am suspicious that this could be causing damage. I’d like to avoid it, although I’d also like to flip my foot the bird and gut it out for as long as possible before the pain becomes crippling because I’m so not into other exercises.
That would be stupid, though, so instead of doing that I am taking at least ten days and possibly two weeks off running.
Is this slowly crushing my soul, as it’s been over two and a half weeks since my last long run? Yes. Do I spend a significant amount of time these days taking naps and watching Cake Boss and The West Wing and eating junk food? Yeah. But I’m also trying to get into other workouts.
Last week I spent about six hours riding a recumbent bike, but that bike hurts my back. I’m not a big fan of riding my real bike outside; I have a fear of not being able to stop at intersections and getting hit by a car. So, amidst the occasional Xbox 360 workout (I need to get back into that, but all the biking makes my knees sensitive…maybe it would be better to just run through the pain. No, no…), I have taken to walking.
On Sunday I walked for 2.5 hours for a total of 10 miles. Fine. I jogged, too. I jogged for about a mile and a half and lo, my foot was fine, which makes absolutely no sense. Last week I walked 5.5 miles on a random day. Today I forced myself to leave the apartment and walked another 6.5 miles.
The thing about walking is that it takes absolutely forever, even at a brisk 14:45 pace. All my regular routes go by in slow motion.
I’ve been tired of listening to music for a while, and lately I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts. But today I needed something better.
I needed an audiobook.
I’m not generally a fan of audiobooks. Ten hours seems like a long time to spend on listening to a short book. Also, audiobooks are expensive; they cost a lot more than paperbacks and significantly more than free, which is what I normally pay for the books I check out from the library.
Now, the library does offer a selection of audiobooks that you can rent for free for two weeks. But the audiobooks that are good are also popular, so when I signed up for the audiobook of Ender’s Game (one of my fave books) I had to wait about two weeks. Finally, the email notification came that my book was available for download. There’s some shenanigans you have to go through to get the file, namely downloading a special program and then actually “checking out” the book, so I did it.
And then it didn’t work.
Even though the book said that it was “iPhone compatible” the actual file wouldn’t work on my computer, which is a Mac. It was a blessed WMA file and through my Internet research I figured out that there is no way to convert this to something I could use on my iPhone. I even tried downloading it directly onto my phone; no dice. So, I was really frustrated.
Today, the two audiobooks I already own (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Outlander) weren’t cutting it. I’d already listened to most of Harry Potter and the woman who recorded Outlander sounds kind of stupid, and her faux-manly voice just ruins the “romantic” scenes…at least in the first two chapters, which is as far as I’ve gotten.
To make a long story medium, I broke down and got an Audible.com subscription. They’re running a deal right now that gives you a one-credit subscription for $7.49 each month for the first three months. After that, the cost is $14.95 per month.
I had my doubts. I wanted to get Ender’s Game, but the whole audiobook is only about 10 hours long. That sounds like a long time to sit and listen to a book, but if I walk for an hour and a half a day…well, it doesn’t last too long at all. The next time I get a “credit” is March 21, so I’ll have a bit of a gap.
But I really wanted to listen to that book, and $7.49 is a lot less than the retail price. One credit on the site buys you one book, although there are apparently a tiny number of books that cost more.
I signed up.
The book was downloaded in like, ten seconds and loaded on my iPhone in under a minute, and then I was out of there. No walk I’ve been on has gone by so quickly.
I don’t know if I’ll keep the subscription after a couple of months, but for now it’s a really nice way to supplement my podcasts. Although audiobooks aren’t the best background for intense runs, they might still be good for the long (and at this point relatively slow) ones, so we’ll see. Even at $15 for a credit it’s still a good deal, especially for a long book with a good narrator.
If there’s one silver lining to being ridiculously, nonsensically injured (really, you’d think three hours on my feet would make this stupid thing flare up, but a 5k? A 5k? Seriously?), I would grudgingly say that it provides an opportunity to try some new things. I’ll even give audiobooks a shot.
It could be worse.