I Hate The Track

I hate the track. Or rather, my ass hates the track. But I’ll get back to this later.

I had a three miler on the schedule today. The weather forecast was –7C (19F) and snow in the afternoon. I was sitting in a meeting at about 11 am and my coworker looks out the window and comments on the amount of snow coming down. It was almost like whiteout conditions. The meeting finished up and I hummed and hawed about whether I really wanted to go out or not. The sidewalks were looking pretty gross and I just was not up for it. So, the treadmill after work it would be.

I was ready to go all Brad Pitt on the treadmill in Burn After Reading. I had my playlist loaded with up T-Pain and Beyonce, and thanks to all of you guys, I realized that I was missing Britney Spears. I rectified that situation before heading out, so now I’d be able to hear Britney tell her to give her more while I was running on the treadmill.

As soon as I pulled into the parking lot at the Y I knew the treadmill situation would be tough. It was full… And indeed, all of the treadmills were taken. Bummer, I would have to start out on the track. I just wanted to get this run over and done with. I could do anything for 45 laps, right? As soon as I started running around the highly banked track my piriformis was hurting. These were going to be 45 long laps if it was going to feel like I had a fork jabbed right in middle of my piriformis the entire time. The first mile clicked off in 9:43, which at the time I was disappointed about. I had kind of thought I was going to be faster. Just then I noticed that a treadmill had opened up, thank goodness! I ran over there to snag it. Who would have ever thought I would be so excited about an empty treadmill?

I wound up next to some body builder guy who was just about to get started on his run, just as soon as he got off of his cell phone to make plans to meet his buddies at the bar later. I’m guessing he was a body builder because he was wearing his weight lifting gloves. On the treadmill. If you read Missy’s blog, all of a sudden I thought I was a part of this episode. I had my Disney Marathon shirt on and cranked the treadmill up to 6.5. Maybe a little fast, but like I mentioned, I was a little disappointed that my first mile was a bit slow and I was ready to make up for it.

As I got going I looked over at Mr. Bodybuilder next to me. He was running at a 5.0 pace. Nothing wrong with that. He kept glancing over at my treadmill though, to see what I was doing. It was almost like he didn’t want to get chicked on the treadmill. He was running along, but every once in awhile he would grab on to the bars on the side. Then he glanced over at my treadmill and pumped it up to 6.0. Now he’s running, reaching for the bars, catching up, then trying to hang on to the console in front of him. He looks over at me and bumps the treadmill up to 6.5. He’s struggling and dropping back. Next thing I know he’s gone off the back. He gets back on the treadmill but shortly after that he calls it a day. 6 minutes in. Poor guy.

The rest of my run was uneventful. I finished it up and spent a good amount of time stretching it out, but my piriformis still hurts. Sigh…time for some more ART I think…