Victory and Defeat in the Time of 60 minutes

Didn't do a class today at the gym, instead went on my own with the surreptitious plan of trying a bit of a jog on the treadmill. Surreptitious, as in, I was going to try to sneak it in on the body before the knee could figure out what was going on and put an end to it. 

First, 30 minutes on the Nordic track machine: 

 

Music: Interpol, "Say Hello to the Angels" - Killers, "Sam's Town" (not the crappy acoustic version either!) - NIN, "Head Like A Hole" - Pink Floyd, "Run Like Hell" and AC/DC "Dirty Deeds (Done Dirt Cheap)"

After all good and worked out on this machine, I figured it was time. 

Time to get back on a treadmill. Time to take the knee out for a little jog.

I should've taken a picture of how pretty that treadmill looked, bathed in soft white light from the skylight above. I grinned to myself as I got on the machine and started it up. 

After a slow start, I punched it up to a whopping 4.5 mph. Found out the knee is most definitely NOT down with that plan. Slowed down, increased the incline. For the remainder of the workout I kept messing with incline and speed, to make it just challenging enough that I was actually working out and not just lollygagging along at a useless staring-at-the-art-in-a-museum pace. 

Towards the end of my 30 minutes, I had this great idea: I would sneak up the speed little by little, till a slow jog would be achieved.  

Hooray! This seems to have worked! My new theory now is that the knee has to be gently cajoled into a jog, and the slower the transition, the better.

So, imagine me, smiling like a fool, this huge triumphant grin on my face as I am jogging along at a positively glacial pace, when all of a sudden the machine stops. Out of the blue. How did this happen? Not smiling anymore. Stupid machine. What in the world?....

And I see it. I see it. The stupid thing that keeps the treadmill on. Most treadmills I've dealt with have a sort of key you insert into a slot, and that's what keeps it on. But noooo, not this one. This treadmill - apparently all of them at the gym - have instead a ridiculous little bobbly thing with a magnet on it that sticks onto this shallow indention. That's what keeps the machine on. It looks like a little Pokemon ball. Apparently I swiped that thing by accident - must've been while I was raising my arms in victory, like a runner completing a marathon - and that's what turned my machine off.

I was just a tad bit miffed at that point. I slapped the stupid machine with my towel, then went to ask the manager if the lost information could be retrieved. Because, you see, clearly the most important thing is not the workout, but that I can take a picture of the readout afterward. Alas, the manager told me what I already had guessed: that you can't get the information back once it's been turned off. 

Man.

But hey! I got to jog a little! That was kind of awesome.