I’m doing training walks. I’m not walking very far at this point. My usual loop is three miles — about an hour — but that will be increasing as weather and daylight start to improve.

I suit up, lace up my shoes (breaking one pair in, a second pair will need to start to be broken around May or June), and stuff my ear buds in my ears so I can shut my brain off and walk.
Books on tape (as it were) are great, but there’s no beat and no impetus to really push myself to keep going at a fast pace. When I listen to books on tape I tend to meander instead of walk and if I’m going to get myself shaped up for this so that I hopefully don’t damage myself walking again, I need to walk. That is, WALK. Meandering doesn’t do it.

I’ve got a couple of hours worth of music pulled from my own music library and arranged in no particular order (I think I’m going to Hell for sandwiching the 1812 Overture in between Abba and Aretha Franklin) that has a significant enough beat to keep me going.
The only problem is that it’s music that I’m desperately familiar with. I mean, I like listening to my walking music, but I’ve listened to it so many times that it’s predictable. I can anticipate the pace that I’ll need to be putting out which gets a little humdrum after a while. And, I understand, it’s a better cardiovascular workout if you switch things around a bit.

So this is where you guys come in.

How long has it been since you made someone a mix tape? Well dust off thpse skills, I’d like one.
Actually I’d like several.
And to make it fun, you can put them on disc and send them to me anonymously and I’ll try to guess who provided which music.

That said I do have some basic rules. I need up beat 4/4 time music. Neither artist, genre, nor epoch matter. Weirdly, disco music makes great walking music. Something like this, or this, or even this. Okay, so I know I’m going to Hell for including that last link in a sentence about disco music, but my grammar was never entirely correct.

Anyway, you get the picture.
Snail mail me a disc, e-mail me a play list (I promise to ask Andrew how to suck it into my i-tunes library so it doesn’t just sit in my “IN” box for the next 18 months), send the band to my door by camel train. Whatever floats your boat.

But can y’all help me out?