Fast Times at 24 Hour Fitness

I’m still on track, though barely. Maybe at some point I’ll start planning out my runs for the week so I don’t find myself at the gym Saturday night trying to make it to 25. I even had this crazy idea that maybe I would exceed 25 this week. Not even close, but maybe next time.

Tonight’s jaunt on the treadmill was particularly painful. This wasn’t a physical pain, but the semi-self-induced pain caused by accidentally getting on the treadmill right in front of the television playing America’s Most Wanted and then refusing to switch to a different machine (I really don’t like resetting my workout because I enjoy having accurate records of how far I’ve gone right in front of me the whole time). I could kind of avoid the tv, but it’s positioning made it hard not to watch. So I had to see the perturbing story of the NorCal rapist for twenty minutes, which isn’t what I wanted to be thinking about right then. Or ever, really. Especially since he hasn’t been caught (apparently that’s the idea behind America’s Most Wanted). Also NorCal is way too close to Portland for me to feel comfortable with this situation. I also learned about a bus driver who almost saved a baby’s life but didn’t, and a bride who got shot in the leg at her bachelorette party and then had to be carried down the aisle by her dad.

About halfway through my workout some lady came in and got on the elliptical in front of me. I thought that she had forgotten her workout clothes, but as she came nearer I discovered that she was just wearing workout clothes disguised as normal clothes. Her pants looked like normal green corduroys, but were actually velour. I’m still not sure I would classify velour as a workout-clothes material, but I’ll let it slide. I forgot about all of this when she started using the elliptical though; she had the worst elliptical machine technique I’ve ever seen.

I’m trying to think of a way to talk about this without sounding like a huge asshole, but I’m really at a loss. However, this is one of the primary things that consume my mind when I’m running or working out around other people, so I can’t help but mention it: I constantly critique the running form of everyone around me. That is, if it’s bad. I honestly don’t pay attention when it’s good, but if it reaches a certain level of awful-ness I start getting really upset and annoyed, but also a tiny bit happy that I have something interesting to think about while I run. I get especially mad if I notice horrible form on someone who’s ahead of me in a race, because that means that even despite their gross inefficiencies they’re still faster than me.

How good is my running form? I have no idea. That doesn’t come into play during any of these thoughts I have about other people’s form. Watching other people run poorly makes me think of all the overuse injuries they’re going to get and how bad it is for them and how much faster they could be if they would stop running like that, and that’s frustrating to me. Like this girl in the velour pants had to be putting incredible strain on her knees. With every gauche step (or elliptical step-equivalent, I don’t know what that would be) her knees would take a huge lateral dive inward while her hips swung out a good half a foot. Then she started going in reverse and things got way worse, and I went back to watching America’s Most Wanted.

I really ought to start running outside more.

Miles run this week: 25
Miles run in 2010: 50