Treadmill Encounters

My tryst with treadmill has never been pleasant. But sometimes there is no choice but to face the encounter with it. In my running life this I had to face the wrath of treadmill more than once. After a long long time today I walked up on the treadmill. I hadn’t run for almost 10 days now due to incessant rains. There were few times when I donned my shoes, wore my dryfits and stood on the verge of starting the run. But the rains made me chicken out. Then I remembered I had signed up for the gym and it is my obligation to visit the gym and run on a treadmill.

Today being my first day at the gym I was asked to strip. When I am asked to remove my running shoes, I feel naked. I was asked to stand on a platform and hold two cables. The machine did what it was supposed to do and came up with inbody analysis. It is a list of parameters looking at which the private trainer at the gym would decide how much to loot me. The general trainer who managed this asked me if I used to workout after looking at the A4 sheet. I proudly said “Yes, I am a runner” and that I had run couple of full marathons and many half marathons. He said Wow and told he is registering for a triathlon. I was awed. I said wow. I asked him was it a half or a full triathlon. He said it was a mini triathlon and told me he would swim for 500 m, run 5kms and cycle 20 kms. I smiled and said to myself, this is not a mini triathlon. Its a micro mini triathlon. After I was done a senior trainer accompanied me and took me to a treadmill. He explained the operation of the treadmill and asked me to start walking a bit and then increase the speed of the machine. He asked me to without any pre run stretches. I was flabbergasted at the thought of running without any stretches. I thought lets listen to him because this would help me decide if I need him. I started my walk at a speed of 4 km per hour and then gradually started running at 9 kms/hr. I set my watch for treadmill and was wondering how would the watch tell me how many kms I had run on treadmill. To my utter surprise, it did tell me the distance and speed at which I ran. It was not accurate but closer to it. I ran for 20 minutes and then did cycling and arc trainer. This was a 35 min workout in all. After I finished my cardio workout, I asked him to show me the stretches. To my joy he asked me to do some useful stretches few of which I was already doing.

The environment in a gym is very different from my road running routine. On road you are in lap of nature irrespective of what it might be. You are encountering weather, traffic, pollution and sweat whereas in a gym you are in a controller environment. The air is conditioned to make you comfortable, you run without moving ahead, there are high bass songs playing. You dont sweat much. Today however I felt a little dizzy after I got off from the treadmill. I told this to the trainer and he said since it is the first time, it is likely that this will happen and asked me to drink water. He was right. Water is the key when you workout. It takes me some time to start knowing and accepting treadmills and the closed environment of a gym. I am free spirited person and for me running is like meditation. When I run I want to be relative to the world and objects around. The things which are static need to have a dynamic relation with my running and dynamic things needs to have a static relation. I want to sweat when I run and wipe it off with my wrist band. I want to see and wave runner as the cross me from the front. I want to have a choice on the road to take when I reach a junction. I want my lungs to tell me to stop when I cross my limits. I want people to see me with awe when I run. All these can be done only when I run on the road and not on the treadmill. These are the few reasons why I prefer running on the road than treadmill. But this is the season where choices are less and options are more. So till the dark clouds hover for the next 2 months, its year to indoor running.