barry burton

the Stumbling

Earlier this week I ran on a treadmill for the first time. Of course, I have been on a treadmill before, perhaps walking for a second, maybe running for a stride or two, but never actually trying to exercise. The experience shattered several misconceptions I previously held.

For one, I always thought the “hill” feature provided by many treadmills was ridiculous. I mean so what, it inclines a tiny little bit, who could ever tell, right? Wrong. Well, at least wrong after a mile or two into it. Maybe it’s the tired legs or oxygen deprived brain but continuing on became noticeably harder when the incline moved up. Dare I say it, I felt as though I was really running up hill.

Incedentally, I hate that excercise rooms are always covered in mirrors. Just because a person wants to excerise, does that really make them narcisistic? I suppose this applies to all running, whether stationary or moving, but the mirror did make me realize that leg-based locomotion is highly inefficient. The legs have to stride over and over so many times in order for the body to get anywhere (or to stay in the same place, as the case may be). It definitely looked ridiculous.

I also thought it would be weird to stay in the same place, but once I turned up the music and got going I ceased to notice that everything around me was stationary. I think it helped to just stare at the little display that alternately provided different bits of slowly changing mundane information. All visual cues being completely boring, my brain just went with the more interesting idicators provided by my ears, joints and muscles. All of these said I was moving fast, and this is what I felt.

Instead of doing the cool-down like the treadmill program suggested, I immediately stepped down to walk away. However, with a fixed position feeling so fast, to actually progress in location was almost more than I could handle. I felt movement at an incredible rate, but I was only walking. It was very hard to remain standing, because my body continually compensated my balance based on this extreme, but imagined, speed. Somewhat like the wobbling walk after spinning around too many times on a bat, my confusion of orientation was however more linear than radial, so I just kept pitching forward as I walked. The sensation of seeing the walls fly past me was breathtaking. Maybe it again had some root in a less than fully functioning brain that was already experiencing running induced euphoria but whatever the cause… it was good. :)