My Exciting Life on a Treadmill

I've re-started my attempts at staving off heart failure by regular running. I go to the nearby gym to run because I find I can distract myself more on a treadmill than outside. Living in a city, it's harder to keep a regular pace when I'm outside due to traffic lights and varying terrain. Instead of distracting I find this reminds me what I'm doing even more. Plus (and maybe I'm alone in this) there's also the constant fear of twisting an ankle and being a mile away from home with nothing but an iPod and a limp as a mugger-aimed "easy target" bullseye. But mostly it's just that once I'm on the treadmill I can get used to the annoyance of running and then try to zone out and forget what I'm doing. This is particularly true when the weather is 28° and snowy, as it was today.

Usually during the spring/summer/fall I run facing the windows out to the big field in front of the gym complex. Oftentimes there are sports teams practicing or playing and I can silently root for or laugh at people. Sometimes in the winter I can face the other windows and watch the basketball team practicing on the court down below. Unfortunately, today I had neither option. It was snowy with a frigid wind, so the best I could get was to watch the front and try to enjoy watching people walk past all bundled against the cold. This wasn't easy to do, as my mind kept reminding me that my increasingly sweaty body was going to freeze as I walked home, even as it stunk up my coat/scarf/gloves. Double win!! However, I found one thing that really made me feel joyful as I huffed and puffed. Being so high up (about 2.5 stories) I had a wide and deep view of the falling snow. I found that by sharpening my focus arbitrarily at different points in front of me I could see all the little eddies and twirls in the airflow by noticing the varied direction of the snow. It seemed like no two points were the same. I could create a really cool effect by focusing near me and watching the snow, then moving my focus farther away to the patch that was right behind each previous patch. If I did it smoothly it felt like I was going into hyperspace in Star Wars (see the picture, that's me with Han Solo). This "eye game" made for some really beautiful moments. And while I've noticed this effect before, I never would have explored it so thoroughly without thoroughly trying to ignore the counter that says "1.535 miles to go."