Thursday, March 6, 2008

Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot

I was duped by the weather report yesterday. It was predicted to be cold, windy, and rainy for most of the day. Looking out the window, all of that was true. Not in the mood to gear up for a windy, chilly run, I opted to head to the gym and run on a treadmill.

I don’t love running on a treadmill, but it does the job when necessary.

Anyways, after chatting with the cute membership girl who initially signed me up for the place, I headed over to my usual spot to get on the belt and jog for a bit. I tend to go to the same area as a) there is the option of not having a television screen in front of you, and b) I have certain objects along the warehouse-like ceiling that I generally stare at while I visualize being outside. I am a creature of habit.

About 2.5 miles into the run, the strangest thing happened – I started to overheat. Not just get sweaty, but more akin to an internal kiln being lit. It seemed like the air wasn’t moving around me (perhaps in that part of the gym it doesn’t really), and my internal temperature rose by a couple of degrees. I stepped off to the sides of the moving belt for a minute to slowly wave my arms (I’m sure this looked quite odd) and create some sort of faux breeze, and then resumed. A mile later I had to do it again.

Of course, once I went through this self-cooling behavior a couple of times, I started to second guess myself on what was happening. Was I tricking myself into thinking that I was overheating, so I could cease with the day’s run? Should I really have gone outside despite the rain?

Stupid brain – it doesn’t really like to shut off. It just spins and spins.

I had this conversation with myself for a while (which, I should add, also included me cheering myself on and thinking about my longer-term goals), until I hit my stated goal of five tread-miles and moved on to the stretching portion of the workout.

After taking a cold shower to shut off the kiln, I got dressed and headed outside. Where it was totally beautiful and sunny. Almost like a perfect fall day. Damn.

1 comment:

mindy said...

That happens to me a lot. I'll finish my run inside on the t-mill (after somehow I've determined the weather says it's an indoor recess day) and then walk outside and realize I probably could have done this outside. Good news is that you slammed out 5 miles no matter what!