Treadmill Tolerance

First week down, ten to go.  I neglected to mention the race I'll be running is in April, it's in New York (Flushing Queens to be exact), and it's simply named "13.1 New York".

This week marked my return to the Big Apple, a return to East Coast winter weather, and a return to the musings one is prone to on a run longer than 30 minutes.  Leaving California also marked the imminent doom of being stuck to a treadmill for the next 10 weeks.  I had been ruminating over how and when I'd be able to get out of the gym and onto the pavement, and while my heart was willing, the ungodly cold froze my intentions the instant I stepped off the plane at JFK.  Hence, Thursday and Saturday were spent staring at a shaded window and a blank TV.  (There will be no television available on race day, so why rob myself of the opportunity to develop mental stamina now?)

Now, 26 minutes is fairly easy to sustain in one place.  But after 45 minutes on the treadmill on Saturday sans music or scenery, with one mile left to go, I strained to keep my mind off any and every little discomfort available to my consciousness.  I scanned to my right and left, skimmed over the dark silent TV, the lowered blinds, and a poster of the human anatomy entitled "Machine and Muscle Guide".  Muscle guide, yes.  Machine?  I pondered this for a moment, as the poster had no technical instructions involved, but did bring up an oft-overlooked idea - we are human machines.  Everything working in conjunction with an adjacent item of musculature to propel and retract.  I suddenly realized why treadmilling irked me so much.  Here I was: a "machine", running on top of a running machine, while staring up at a blank machine and checking the time pass on yet another machine, surrounded by fifteen other machines, going nowhere.  Talk about grounds for an existential crisis.

Running outside, or any where for that matter - where I can see the propulsion of my feet as the scenery passes me by, where I can feel the thudding of my heart and taste the exhalation of my breath in the chilly climate, this experience reminds me that I am more than a machine...I'm a human phenomenon. And a natural one at that - not a machine, not something manufactured to produce a routine event over and over again in the same movement ad infinitum, but a living, breathing, celebration of movement.
The main reason I love running, I discovered, was the celebration involved in the event.  Celebration of capability and of capacity, celebration of a natural phenomenon.
Running in place like a cog on a wheel hardly classifies as a celebration.  Yet, there I was, running  parallel to the irony beneath my feet, and I had three-quarters of a mile to go.

So I decided to celebrate.

I started with my left leg.  I concentrated on celebrating its very own capability to swing back and forth, and tread...and tread some more.  I repeated the celebration with my right leg.  Then with my arms, and finally with my heart.  The breathing, the pulsing, the movement - all of it caught my attention for just long enough.  The only thing that did not want to celebrate with me was my mind, which was still trying to bring my attention to the ache in my lungs and the fact that I was obviously going crazy.

And then the machine beneath me stopped.
And I clapped my hands and let out a small whoop of joy.

And today I went outside to run, regardless of the cold.  Sure, it was -8 degrees F with the wind chill.  Sure, I could barely feel my legs.  But it was glorious, it was celebratory, and you can be sure I had a smile frozen on my face the whole time.