Another day, another battle with pace and consistency.
It was a long working day, but I still had some sort of energy and wanted to keep up my training. Ate a Luna bar from the stash in my desk and decided that I needed to get to the gym for a run before I didn’t have the will to anymore.
At work we have this Wellness challenge, a month of tracking your diet and exercise to earn a corporate branded chopping board. Normally I’d be happy for this occurrence, but now that I’m “marathon training”, if that’s what you honestly could claim that I’m doing, the Wellness Challenge is annoying. What it means is that normally when new years resolution gym go-ers would tapper off, the gym is still super crowded. Ordinarily the gym is less busy after 7pm, but today when I arrived, nary a treadmill would be free.
Luckily my shot in the dark is a recent installation of a self-propelled treadmill known as The Curve. They put this in on the side of the gym, and because it’s relatively new no one knows how to use it. I head over there and it’s free and spend the first 5 minutes reading the instructions and trying to reset the timer. When the reset button fails, I do as all IT support people suggest when some technical machinery is broken, power on and off the item. I removed the battery and then put it back. Success.
Once on, it’s a bit hard to keep a steady pace if you haven’t practiced. The curved belt requires gravity and your weight leaning forward to keep the motion going, but too much and you’re sprinting, too little and it’s a forced walk. Using the curve definitely felt more exhausting than running outside or on a treadmill as for me it tended to make my strides longer and faster, but being as it’s the only device free I decided to run at least a mile.
Midway through my mile a man paces about near me, glancing over at me with hope. He’s hoping I’ll be done soon so he can use the machine. I try harder to ignore his gaze and focus on trudging along at variable speeds.
At about 1.5 miles I’m completely winded and drenched in sweat. Having someone wanting the treadmill made me run further, but trying to figure out the interval pacing with prying eyes was unsustainable. I stop and decide to cool off by walking around the gym. I visually see an internal cheer from pacy man in the background as he finishes stretching and dashes to the Curve to claim it before anyone else can.
Ugh Curve, you crushed me. I’ll get you next time.
Days till Marathon: 199
Mileage: 1.5 miles
Pace: 13:35/mi
Met Along The Way: Pacey, lurker of The Curve
