How To Win A Battle Of Wills Against A Machine

Today I was in a bit of agony all day long.  I went to the gym on Tuesday and did my ‘go till I drop’ day.  Mainly what seemed to kill me was the 120 squats (done by going 1 squat in the first minute, 2 in the second, 3 in the third etc.) and then not stretching enough after.  That’s the part the usually comes back to bite me.  You could ask the girls at work and they’d tell you I was sort of grunting like and old man any time I had to sit or stand back up all day long.

Today is Thursday and therefore a gym day, I was not about to let a little sore stiffness get in my way.  I also decided arbitrarily that I was going to run 8 Kilometres (5 miles) once I got to the gym. 

I got on the treadmill and started off at a 7mph trot just to try to work the stiffness out, a couple of minutes and I went to 7.5 and by about four minutes in I was running at 8mph.  It was not a high pace, but I figured that I was a bit sore and I have done pretty much only 5K runs since picking it back up in December, so I would go at a pace where I could be sure to get the distance.

Running on the treadmill is dreadfully boring and where you start is where you finish so when you are feeling like I was today it is easy to think about getting off and stopping.  I finished the 5K distance and I was thinking ‘I could stop now and it would be no different than any other run.’  But I had said to myself 8K and now that I was at a 8mph pace I decided that I could not go back.

So I just kept running, my legs were really screaming at me now, but I had to win.  I had made the rules and I was going to beat the machine.  I would run the whole distance I had set and the pace I was presently at or my legs would give out and I would hilariously flail to the gym floor trying.

I think this whole process was made more difficult by the machine and the boredom that it brings with it, but that is another topic.

In the end I did succeed, if I would not have gotten thrown out of the gym I would have spat in the face of the machine that thought it could defeat me.  However, All the exercise did nothing to cure my stiffness, I’m still hobbling around a bit this evening.  Boo to that.