Goals

Dear Emergency Stop Button, You are not my particular friend. You messed up my run again. You are far too sensitive, and I invite you to depart from the treadmill the next time I use it.

I was in fine form today. I had eaten well all day, made sure I was drinking my water. I had a productive day at work and was looking forward to the weekend. I hopped on that treadmill with grand intentions. And for the first 22 minutes, it was awesome. Mile one whizzed by in less than fifteen minutes. Mile two would surely be more promising. I was holding steady on all my goals: steady calorie burn, improving time, increasing speed.

I had just gotten into one of those amazing grooves you get with running where everything just feels perfect... form was loose but strong, head up, back straight, breathing was coming easy. It's the moments that runners live for; everything else falls away and it feels natural and rhythmic.

Until it jarred to a stop.

My hand barely tapped the emergency stop and I stumbled as the belt abruptly interrupted my bliss. More than that, all my stats disappeared. I didn't know what my time was, what distance I had run, how many calories I'd burned. There I was standing still on a treadmill wondering what to do now. Keep going? Start over? Call it quits?

I felt deflated. I decided to do another mile and a half, confident that I would have at least completed my initial goal. One of them, at least. As I picked up my pace again, I pondered goal making; how I often set myself up for defeat because I'll make a reasonable goal while still holding myself to a silent, completely outrageous goal at the same time. It's self-defeating. I've been working on setting more reasonable goals, trying to share them with someone so they can tell me I'm way off base or right on target.

Apparently the treadmill was trying to tell me something.

I found my groove again. I was pushing past two minutes, still breathing well and feeling limber when I did it again.

My knee almost buckled this time.

Now I was just mad. Once again my stats were gone, I'd almost hurt myself and I was once again standing on a treadmill looking dumb. I wasn't sure how far I'd gotten or how many calories I'd burned. I had no idea how many more miles I needed to complete a 5K so I just plugged another twenty minutes into the timer and backed away from the console and that red button.

No goals, just cardio. I decided to go with whatever worked.

It turned out to be a great hour. I don't have a lot to report except I sweated buckets, burned nearly double the calories I wanted to, ran some crazy sprints and was one satisfied puppy when I left. Maybe next time I'll dial back a bit on the goals and the treadmill will try not to kill me.

Sounds fair to me.