Treadmill
The treadmill stands in front of me. My legs begin to move. Step by step, shifting into a walk. A small wave of exhaustion is still there, softly sloshing to the beat of my footsteps. I do a brief safety check: boots double laced, safety tag attached. The room is peaceful. The clock reads 7:50, the speedometer, 6 kilometres per hour. Then it's 9, then 12, and suddenly I am running at my full pace.
I love to run because it's such an intuitive sport. I’ve tried golf, basketball, rugby, even fencing — all of which I quit because I just couldn’t grasp the thousands of micro-movements that you had to make. But with running, there are no micro-movements. There’s no throwing or hitting or dodging or dancing. You simply take your two legs, face a destination, and run. Simple.
I begin to feel the force of the treadmill slowly pushing me back, I fight back and shift myself forward. I have 3 kilometres to go.
The first kilometre is always the hardest. It feels like getting woken up in the middle of the night, your body struggling to understand the sudden strain, you having to explain at every stroke that this was necessary and healthy. I try to avoid looking at my progress, praying that I would last at least a kilometre before I would inevitably look down again. Refocusing my balance, I stared into the mirror in front of me instead. It’s almost surreal how my face remains so flat and expressionless even when I am at this speed — almost as if I was looking at a different person. As a joke, I raised a finger to the reflection. It responded in turn. We spent the next kilometre barking insults at each other, both trying to forget the strain below us, the pounding in the background.
At the second kilometre mark, things get easier. This is the part when your body realises that you actually intend to run that entire length. I could feel the adrenaline and endorphins beginning to pump inside my body, the haze of exhaustion and stress giving way to excitement. And then, slowly yet always unexpectedly, my body becomes light enough to forget the pain I felt. I am almost flying. I pretend to be an ostrich — sprinting across the dry savanna, my limbs flailing about, convinced that if I just go a little further I could maybe fly.
My heart is still pumping as I make my way into the shower, my legs now softly groaning with each step. I stand there, dumbly staring at the showerhead. Suddenly this seems a bit more daunting than I’ve imagined, despite all the times I have done this. With a small shout: “Allez-hop”, I flung the knob open, and felt the jolt of the cold water rushing over me. There’s a curious sensation to taking cold showers when your body is hot — the warm rushing outwards and mixing into the cold, as if a storm is brewing inside you. Then comes the best part. Fibre by fibre, the muscles in my leg begin to relax. And as if a plaster had suddenly been peeled off, the exhaustion and the strain in my entire body began to ooze out, slowly collecting for a second at my feet before being coaxed down the drain by the waters. The fatigue — gone with it.