If I Ran My Life Like I Run On the Treadmill

As I write this, it is winter and I have begun struggling with the overwhelming and debilitating urge to hibernate. You see, where I live, it gets cold and dark and snowy in the winter. It’s not the romantic-one-week-of-snow-around-Christmas-time-to-make-it-look-really-pretty-like-a-postcard-Christmas type of winter, it is the-days-are-really-short-it-gets-dark-really-early-and-really-cold-and-miserable-and-Mother-Nature-sees-fit-to-deposit-tonnes-of-snow-and-freezing-rain-that-makes-footing-perilously-slippery type of winter.

The bears around here are smart, they DO hibernate; Mother Nature blessed the bears by having them fatten themselves up PRIOR to winter, so that they can BURN off the calories while they sleep though the miseries of winter awakening in the spring, thinner and ready to take on the new year.

Last year, I did my human equivalent of a bear’s hibernation; except with out the good fortune of being able to go without eating and just sleep for five months. For humans, hibernation is not so healthy; my hibernation involved, on a semi-regular basis; a box of crackers and some brie cheese followed by a large chocolate bar (or two), whilst being curled up on the couch watching whatever is on television and ignoring the nasty outdoors, venturing out only at times of necessity – for work, or for procuring food (always of a highly carbohydrate and caloric nature). Human hibernation at it’s basic: too much food and not enough fitness.

This year my hibernation is less extreme. I have joined a spin group and venture out two nights a week to spin with a group of friendly and dedicated cyclists. I have also discovered the fitness room in my apartment building. Well actually, I didn’t discover it – I knew where it was and walked past it almost every day. Yet, now, instead of walking past, I walk on in. This year’s hibernation also involves running on the treadmill instead of using the excuse that I can’t run because running outside in the winter is perilous.

Now, don’t get me wrong, treadmill running is not without its perils too, the main one being BOREDOM.

Treadmill running is inherently boring; the scenery doesn’t change, you are always looking at the same walls, making no forward progress. Not only that but, right in front of you, glaring at you, almost taunting you to stop – is your time in big bold LED digital numbers, ever so slowly counting up.

To alleviate this boredom I have come up with some diversions; the first one being doing math in my head; by dividing the total run time into fractions and then counting each fraction as I get to it. On my longer runs (up to two hours long) I’ve been able to divide the time into 24ths, for an hour run that works out to 2.5 minute intervals; this allows me to distract myself and thus make the time seem to go faster – Divide and conquer.

The other distraction I find on the treadmill is the graphical display. I choose a run setting that has varying terrain and so there is a graphical indicator that shows how steep the incline is by displaying stacks of squares, the taller the stack the greater the incline. Each stack is a ten second increment so every 30 seconds the terrain changes and I can look ahead at the upcoming terrain and pick a stack of squares like a signpost in the distance and watch it come ever closer until it passes off to the left and I have to look to the right again to find another signpost. This makes me feel like I am making tangible progress on my run even though my true scenery is not changing.

Another way combines the first two. Each time I make another fraction of my run or pass another signpost I give a little inward celebration. Celebrating even the smallest victory seems to help.

One day I realized, as I was on my 21st 24th, that I could adopt this same strategy to the chaos I call an apartment and in the rest of my life.

I have a million tasks that I have to complete and I don’t know where to start. Like the daunting realization at the beginning of the long run, overwhelmed by the apparent enormity of the run in its entirety; all tasks together seems insurmountable. But if I were to separate them out into smaller tasks that were achievable over a shorter space of time, I could easily make progress. Divide and conquer the total chaos in smaller chunks.

I could substitute the math in my head that I use as a distraction with listening to music or trying to make some sort of game out of the process. I could write out the subtasks and cross them off as I complete them, showing me my tangible progress that I so like to see.

It’s funny how you can approach totally different situations with similar solutions. Not to mention, it’s terribly odd the things I think about whilst running…yet another good distraction from the monotony of hibernation-avoidance.

Happy Hibernation, err I mean Happy Winter!