Inside Humor

There are two scenarios that force me to run inside on the 'dreadmil'.  The first is a blizzard as it's pretty tough to run through a white out.  And the second is when temps go below 10 degrees and the roads freeze which is an invitation for frost bite and a broken bone.  Both of those weather phenomena happened this week.  Go figure.  Tuesday morning it was 6℉ and our driveway was a sheet of ice so I headed off to the YMCA to run on the hamster wheel.  Since it was my first time inside this season, I was okay with it.  I hadn't run in over a week so I was a itchin' to move and the combination of that along with the novelty of something new made the run kind of fun.  Kind of.  In truth, I did sing and dance a little bit to keep myself entertained.  During my 2nd of 5 miles, the trainer came over to chat with me.  That was funny.  Here's a little piece of our conversation:

Trainer: Miss, are you okay?
Me: Yes. Why?
Trainer: You were waiving your hands and mumbling. I thought you needed something.
Me: Oh. Sorry. I was singing and, um, dancing.
Trainer: (raised eyebrow) Ah. Do you do that a lot?
Me: Yes. Yes I do.
Trainer: Right. Good to know.

As runners, we do what we have to do to make it work, especially during the winter.  When I run, I like to rock out.  When I'm outside, it's not very obvious.  When I'm inside it probably looks ridiculous.  I guess I don't really care.  On to Wednesday.  It had snowed about 8 inches the night before.  The roads were sketchy and there was no room to run.  I headed back to the gym for a track workout.  The novelty had definitely worn off and I was in no way looking forward to getting back on a machine to run.  I begrudgingly hopped on and did a 2 mile warmup; nice and slow.  Then, I switched gears and started my workout which was 10x400 @ 5K pace with a 400 recovery jog in between.  As you can imagine, going from 7mph to 10mph every 90 seconds looked as bizarre as it sounds.  For my first couple of intervals, as I sped up and slowed down, I could see the trainer walking back and forth behind me.  I'm pretty sure she thought I didn't know how to use the machine and was worried I might fall off.  But, by the 4th repeat, I had settled into a rhythm, albeit choppy, and I guess she assumed I had it under control.  The whole workout took me a little over an hour.  It was so damn hard. (there's no cheating on a treadmill)  When I finished and was walking to a stop, the girl on the treadmill next to me was staring at me with a confused look on her face.  Here's how this conversation played out:

Her: What were you just doing?
Me: Oh, I was doing a track workout that I would normally do outside.
Her: Are you training for something?
Me: Not really.  I mean, I have a few races coming up next spring but I'm always sort of in training.
Her: So you like doing that?
Me: Well, it's hard and I don't like it while I'm in the middle of if.  But, yea, I like it when I'm done.
Her: No offense, but that's just crazy.
Me:  Well, I...yea.  Yea it is.  

I laughed with her as I hopped off and walked away.  It's going to be a long, and, apparently, humorous, winter.  I'm good with that.  No, really, I am.

Listen to this:
Turn It Around - Lucius