Quickie: Run, Lift, Scale

Very nice run yesterday.  I pushed myself to do 4.5 miles instead of just 4, figuring that the closer I can get to 12K by mid-August, the better.  I had my iPod with me, which I don't usually do, because I wanted a little extra upbeat encouragement.  On the 1/2 mile cool down toward home, "It's Raining Men" came on; I had to bust out some dance moves there in the street--living like the world is my own personal musical.  I also queued up "Fanfare for the Common Man" as my final song, and spent some time bowing and accepting the accolades of the imaginary cheering crowd.

This morning, I was back in the gym, doing some sets.
1) Jumping jacks (40), push-ups (6-7), and doodle-bugs (24).  Three sets.
2) Body-weight rows (10-12), overhead dumbbell press (7, with 40 lbs), farmer's walk (90 lbs).  Three sets.
3) Pull-ups (5, with 35 lb assist), mountain climbers (32).  Two sets.
30 minutes, all told.  Plus 5 minutes of stretching, mostly pecs, triceps, and obliques.

Weight is 149 pounds.  The scale at the gym is one of those older-fashioned beam balance type, where you slide the little markers along the bar.  According to the book Rethinking Thin by Gina Kolata, the bathroom scale was one of three items of technology which has enabled the weight craze as we know it.  Think about a world in which you weren't weighed each time you went to the doctor's office--in order to know your weight, you'd have to go to a factory or a grain operation and step on an industrial scale.

The other two items were affordable full-length mirrors and mass-produced photography.  Of course, we all know where photography has led--photoshop!  Actually even in the early days of photography, there was editing done even to shrink the waists of women already in corsets.  Even though we all acknowledge that the images in magazines are not real, they still impress themselves upon our sense of what we should look like.  However, when you look around at the women (and men) all around you in the real world, it's easy to see that we all come in a variety of shapes and sizes.