Daggum treadmills

For my training today (which I’m pretending to be all caught up on because I did one long run in one month… yikes), I had to run speed intervals. I’ve actually started to really enjoy these workouts. Maybe it’s because I can channel my inner former-sprinter and because I can talk myself in and out of stuff easier when it’s for shorter periods of time.

Whatever the reason, I was having a grand old run this early morning on a treadmill, when I started noticing that when my treadmill was at the running speed, it was shaking back and forth more than I’m comfortable with.

Quick – but important – sidenote: My gym is notorious for constantly having machines that are broken. At any given point, almost half the machines don’t work. A couple weeks ago I was running on one of the few supposedly “functioning” machines doing intervals only to find out that the belt was incapable of going faster than my jog speed. So…even the functioning machines often don’t work correctly.

Anyway, I’m doing one of my speed intervals and the treadmill is shaking intensely. I got nervous and switched treadmills. Not only was I nervous that the shaking would make the belt do something weird, but it also kind of made me feel fat-like the treadmill can’t handle my weight on it. And I see some BIG people on those things. Didn’t like that shiz one bit.

I stepped on the treadmill just to my right because the two to my left were both “Out of Order.” (See my above tirade.) When I went to do my fast speed on that treadmill, it was barely any faster than my walking speed.

I would like to take this moment to recognize that I could totally go on a badass ramble about how fast I run and how awesome I am to run so fast… but I don’t run all that fast really. It’s nowhere near the supposed capacity of a treadmill. I would love to pretend like “Man, I’m so awesome that even a treadmill can’t handle this speed,” but it’s more like “I run sometimes and sometimes I go faster than slow and any treadmill should be able to handle it because it’s very reasonable.”

To wrap up this epic interval story, I had to move to a treadmill right next to someone running (always an awkward move when there are so many theoretical options- but they were all out of order! It was my only option!) and I had to pick up the intervals halfway through where I had left off.

That treadmill didn’t shake and went what seemed like the right speed (felt very fast and I didn’t like it so I assumed it was the right speed) so I finished my run “successfully.” Technically.

I still felt awkward because I was the girl who kept switching treadmills every five minutes. Blarg.