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jfbThere's a long story about me and exercise which starts slowly with gym class humiliations and high school stereotypes, takes a sharp turn around September 11, continues through a doomed crush (just like all my other long stories) and a series of 5K runs that people who know me are still bewildered by, and then stops dead during a Halloween drive back from Los Angeles. But I'm not telling that story today.
After five days sitting in a car coming back from Minneapolis I woke up in my own bed and thought I should get some exercise today, and for once I didn't come up with a million other things to do instead, and since then I've managed to go over to my apartment complex's "Fitness Center" every day for a whole week. (It's not really a center, it's a room, with some exercise bikes and some treadmills and some complicated things I stay away from.) Each morning I wake up and I think maybe today I won't bother, and then I check a mirror and no, I'm still not hot, and I stretch my arms and no, I'm still not healthy, so eventually I trudge over to the "Fitness Center". I don't get much exercise, but I get a little, and I feel better afterwards, so I guess it's good.
Today I moved from the exercise bike to the treadmill for the first time since that Halloween trip. I'd forgotten how different the two machines are, or at least how differently I use them. When I get on the exercise bike--look, I've got a short attention span, and a feeling always that there's something else I should be doing. So I'm pumping the pedals with my legs, but I'm also reading a magazine, and I'm listening to some pop songs, and I'm singing along, sort of, and I'm timing the rhythm of my feet to mesh somehow with the beat of the song. Burning calories is just a part of what my mind and body are working on.
But on the treadmill, there's no way to hold a magazine so I can read it, and the machine sets the pace so I can't match the rhythm of the music, and I work hard and I focus. Everything narrows down to the digital readout that tells me how far I am from whatever arbitrary goal of distance or time I've set for myself, and I'm staring at the red LEDs thinking this is hard... I could just quit now... okay, just a little bit longer... and this lasts from about three minutes in until a dull electronic bell rings and the machine lets me slow down and then stop.
Focus like this is pretty rare in my life. I can never seem to put aside all the other distractions and just work on one thing. So it seems like there's probably some useful lesson I can learn from this. But I don't know what it is. Run more, maybe.
After five days sitting in a car coming back from Minneapolis I woke up in my own bed and thought I should get some exercise today, and for once I didn't come up with a million other things to do instead, and since then I've managed to go over to my apartment complex's "Fitness Center" every day for a whole week. (It's not really a center, it's a room, with some exercise bikes and some treadmills and some complicated things I stay away from.) Each morning I wake up and I think maybe today I won't bother, and then I check a mirror and no, I'm still not hot, and I stretch my arms and no, I'm still not healthy, so eventually I trudge over to the "Fitness Center". I don't get much exercise, but I get a little, and I feel better afterwards, so I guess it's good.
Today I moved from the exercise bike to the treadmill for the first time since that Halloween trip. I'd forgotten how different the two machines are, or at least how differently I use them. When I get on the exercise bike--look, I've got a short attention span, and a feeling always that there's something else I should be doing. So I'm pumping the pedals with my legs, but I'm also reading a magazine, and I'm listening to some pop songs, and I'm singing along, sort of, and I'm timing the rhythm of my feet to mesh somehow with the beat of the song. Burning calories is just a part of what my mind and body are working on.
But on the treadmill, there's no way to hold a magazine so I can read it, and the machine sets the pace so I can't match the rhythm of the music, and I work hard and I focus. Everything narrows down to the digital readout that tells me how far I am from whatever arbitrary goal of distance or time I've set for myself, and I'm staring at the red LEDs thinking this is hard... I could just quit now... okay, just a little bit longer... and this lasts from about three minutes in until a dull electronic bell rings and the machine lets me slow down and then stop.
Focus like this is pretty rare in my life. I can never seem to put aside all the other distractions and just work on one thing. So it seems like there's probably some useful lesson I can learn from this. But I don't know what it is. Run more, maybe.
