Track Record

My treadmill broke down this week.

I’d love to say that I legitimately “used it up”—but truthfully, I haven’t been that assiduous with my exercising. It was a pretty cheap treadmill, and it has lasted since our COVID shut-in year, but I didn’t use it up with overuse. I swoop from one end of the scale to the other: I’m using it daily, doggedly, determinedly… Or it’s gathering dust above, & cat hair below. (I’ve learned to hand-vac beneath it before getting back on it after a break. Otherwise a full cat’s-worth of fur will shoot out the back like the cartoon dust-cloud behind the RoadRunner.)

My particular flavor of OCD manifests itself in all-or-nothing behaviors, and the sudden lack of treadmill is upsetting because I’m in an “ALL” phase right now. (Even though I wasn’t exercising at all, just two weeks ago. Not-exercising is fine if I were in a “nothing” phase, but it’s actually distressing when my brain tells me I’m supposed to be ALL-ing.)

“Well, dear,” my husband said (fighting a smile as he pointed out the obvious), “You can walk outside.”

Oh. Right. There’s that. We even conveniently live in a park that’s built in the shape of an elongated oval, each lap measuring one-third of a mile.

As I stepped outside in my walking-shoes, I was reminded that we’re in my favorite time of year, weather-wise—when it’s chilly at night and warm in the afternoon, when we’ll switch from heater to A/C and back again in 24 hours, and when the temp outside is Goldilocks-level just right. None of the triple-digit blazing heat of our summers, none of the negative-digit frigidity of our winters. Just right.

As I stepped outside in my walking-shoes, I was reminded that I spent very little time working outdoors this summer. In June and July I was healing from foot surgery, but after that I was just… in the habit? In the habit of not weeding and planting and landscaping, in the habit of not coming inside at the end of the day with sweat-sopped clothing and mud between my (bare) toes and beneath my fingernails. I will say that my previous years’ work (planting inexpensive small plants that could expand and grow together into pleasantly disordered borders & ground cover) did marvelously well with a year of going virtually untended, though I’ve lost some ground in my ongoing turf-war against clover & dandelions… but I’ve just remembered how satisfying I found the physical work, and the physical results.

As I rounded the last curve of the last lap in my walking shoes, my Apple Watch reminded me how my pace wanders when my mind wanders, when I’m walking without the regulating influence of the treadmill. I could spend twice my usual time, or I could walk half my usual distance, but I just cannot seem to keep up the tempo when I’m walking on actual ground. (Probably I could do better with up-tempo music, but I really like an audio-book to make the time go by quickly.)

Also… my surgery-foot was throbbing, which it doesn’t do on the treadmill. (About 95% of the loop is paved, but there still seems to be just enough unevenness to give my foot a different workout from the treadmill.)

Also… it seemed like all of our work-crew and half of our residents were outside while I walked, and I felt oddly compelled to explain myself, repeatedly. “My treadmill broke!”

Also… I’m not a fan of sweating publicly. Even in high school track practice, I got teased for my bright-red face, which lobsterizes almost immediately when I begin to exercise, before I even work up a sweat.

I briefly enjoyed the outdoors-ness of my walking—but all things considered, I’m pleased that the new cheap treadmill is now waiting to be liberated from its Amazon box. I can return to my consistently-paced—and private—sweating. And the happy thought of winter plane-tickets to Hawai’i (a week in SWIMSUITS, yay!) should be sufficient to power a lot of living-room “laps.” Let the “ALL” mode continue!