I want a new Drug

As I was pounding away on the elliptical machine listening to the music I had downloaded the first few minutes thinking I was not going to make it today, that maybe today I would just go over 20 minutes then quit. 20 minutes is good, 20 minutes is fat burning. 22 minutes is better, then when I open my tightly closes eyes, pressed so close together that if I try to see the time it is only blur, and if that blur says I have passed the 20 minuets mark, then I am almost half way to the 45 minutes I really want to ....reach.

My eyeglasses are perched under the screen that tells me how hard I am pumping, how fast I am going, how high my pulse is reaching, how long I have been sweating.

I think that Joe took the money he received from his first bonus as an officer in 2006 and bought this machine. He researched it on Consumer Report, did his homework. He could have purchases a cheaper one but went with this model and three moves later, it remains the Thoroughbred of fat burning machines. As many times as I have tried to destroy it, it triumphs.

And I keep on keeping on.

I remember how the runners high feels. A euphoric cushion of well being, of floating, of all things being almost perfect.

One night, many years ago Joe and I ran in our first 5K race on the downtown streets of Lex on a steamy August night with 5000 other runners. He was/is faster than me and as I approached the final stretch to the finish line he came bounding out from the crowd and made me run faster, faster and faster to finish the race. God Good what a feeling to finish your first race!

It was such an incredible high. It is a feeling that is akin to leaving your body and being just a little bit above you, hoovering and not with you anymore, but still within reach...

A runners high.

I pump those pedals and marvel at how my knees do not scream at me and how my mind says, "No not this song - yea this one- no next one - "

And then I am over 40 minutes and feel a flush of exhilaration and satisfaction and for two minutes flip through songs trying to find that last one, that last three minute song to bring it home....

And then I find it, Huey Lewis, "I Need A New Drug".

And I realize that I have.