Thoughts from the Treadmill

I hate running on a treadmill except for the fact that it lets me turn on my music and zone out safely, ie, without worries of traffic or assailants. I can let my mind wander while I try to ignore the annoying numbers flashing every second and calorie in front of me. I consider it lazy running. Today I didn't want to deal with outside elements, so I took my lazy running butt down to the treadmill and tuned out.

One thing other thing I took from our safety overseas lectures last week was that diet and exercise are important. The stress of adjusting to life in East Africa will be difficult enough even if I'm not carjacked or taken hostage and many people cited their exercise routine as a base for staying sane and working through the stress. I started thinking I should get a regular routine in place before I go, so that working out will be even less of a shock to my system. I talk about running a lot, but my actual doing it has been pretty erratic for a while.

So, thinking of that plus the fact that my thighs are starting to touch each other, I decided I'd better get serious about running again. Yes, it's a well-kept secret of mine that I'm letting out now. Sometimes my thighs rub together. I'm thin, and you wouldn't expect that just by looking at me. You might wonder about it if you hear me walk by wearing corduroy pants. They go up and down, though. During periods of heavy walking and running, they slim down. During periods of massive cheese eating, they go up. And what's odd is I'm not losing or gaining a lot of weight, maybe a pound or two. It's just that the distribution changes.

I wore a skirt last night (we saw Macbeth and it was awesome--more on that later) and I could feel the rub-rub and it had been over 2 weeks since the last time I ran. I knew it was time to get back on my feet. Rubbing thighs should be enough of an impetus for anyone to get up and workout. It's so gross. And I lived for so long without this phenomenon, I can't believe it started happening to me! Not that I totally loved my body when I was 22, but it was a heck of a lot easier to maintain than it is at 32. I should have been more appreciative of my younger body. It's only going to get harder to maintain from here.

I was looking over my poor, sporadic entries on Facebook's RunLogger this morning. I'm a pathetic excuse for a runner. I have to get over how easy it used to be and make it easy again. The only way to do that is to keep running.

So, yeah, my mind wanders quite a bit on that stupid treadmill.