The treadmill report (continued)

I'm cooling down from my daily treadmill hike and can report that I'm still very happy with our sidelong lurch toward fitness.

I've been on it every day but two since I took it for its inaugural spin on Nov. 3, striding along to a specially prepared playlist on my iPod.

I feel better, have more energy and am down a belt notch as a consequence.

It's amazing how much the right music can energize a person - well, this person anyway.

Maria and I have been using our Classic iPods - mine is a 60GB and hers is an 80GB - but we find them a bit cumbersome and clunky.

So now that we have the illusion of financial solvency, I broke down today and bought a blue 1GB iPod Shuffle at Circuit City for Maria and me to use on the treadmill.

I loaded up my 76-song Walking Music playlist (the 1GB can accommodate about 250 songs), clipped it to my shirt and did a 25-minute, 1-mile-plus stroll and feel completely justified in spending $49 for the Shuffle.

Maria likes to go for extended sessions of 50-60 minutes. I prefer shorter, more intense workouts and have been bumping up the speed and the slope to get my heart rate into the upper ranges of my aerobic target zone. Among other things, I've noticed my heart recovery time is getting shorter and shorter as I creep toward an approximation of fitness.