Monday, June 3, 2013

At 5,000 feet – shouldn’t the view be better?

Today I had to do something I had been dreading – I climbed 5,000 vertical feet on a treadmill trapmill. I’ve avoided this day for months. I’ve played guessing games with the weather for too long. We’ve had our 5th wettest May on record and that hasn’t been conducive for getting my training hikes completed. I had one remaining hike to log – travel wasn’t an option for this one. With all the rivers flooding and trails overgrown – it started looking like the trapmill was my only option. So I found a local gym that had machines that would track vertical distance, sadly this gym also smelled like sweaty gym socks. I bought a day pass, briefly explained what I was doing to the uninterested kid at the front desk, climbed on and away I went. I know people get excellent workouts everyday on treadmills, and that is great for them. For me – a treadmill is an evil necessity used only to escape weather. Between texting with my friend, who was also completing her climb on a treadmill 800+ miles away, and discovering that I had never finished Celia Rivenbark’s audiobook You can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the morning I survived the challenge. Her sarcasm was the magic bullet I needed. With ear buds in place, I zoned out and started my climb at 20% incline. I was in a closed room with no windows, no air moving and nothing to occupy my flea-sized attention span. With Miss Celia telling stories in my ear (and yes more than a few awkward, but actual, LOL moments), I completely blocked out the curious onlookers. I’m sure I looked odd to them on a treadmill wearing a fully-loaded backpack, but I didn’t care. I was on the mission to hit 5,000 feet as quickly as possible and get the heck out of there.

Realizations:

  • Sarcasm has always been my “Go To” coping mechanism – I just never realized the training benefits of it.
  • The monotony of the treadmill made me appreciate the variety you get from CrossFit.
  • Boredom was my biggest challenge. Thankfully hoofing it for a few hours at 20% incline wasn’t the hard part.

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