Day 1: Off to a Rocky Start
I had my second appointment with my new therapist today and told her about my hopes for this blog. I’d worked hard on the site design for the past several days and was finally happy enough with it, so I bit the bullet when I managed to get off work early and headed up to the gym before dinner.
Today’s pairing: “A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder” by Holly Jackson and the treadmill.
I’ve seen the first episode of “Good Girl’s Guide” on Netflix and liked it, so when I saw the book at Target (I hadn’t known the series was based on a book) I flipped through it and discovered it’s one of my favorite kind of novels: epistolary. I LOVE all kinds of epistolary novels: from the good old-fashioned ones like “84, Charing Cross Road” by Helen Hanff, comprised of her real-life letters to the bookseller in London, to the “Boy” series by Meg Cabot, told through emails, voicemail transcripts, instant messenger threads, and notes scribbled on to-go menus. I snapped “Good Girl” up. I buy books as a coping mechanism. Hence why my to-be-read shelf is in fact two shelves. Since this book was the most recently acquired, it’s the first one to join me at the gym.
At the gym this evening, I tested the waters with the treadmill. It seemed the safest option and there was a handy little ledge perfect for holding up my book between the hand-bar-thingy and the menu-screen-thingy (making a note to research the names of the parts of the machine later). I fiddled with the menu screen until I came across the option labeled “BEGINNER” and dove in. And yes, I know I’m mixing all kinds of metaphors with “testing the waters” and “diving in” in regards to a piece of exercise equipment on dry land, but let the record show I am a terrible swimmer and not that great at using treadmills, so the metaphor holds. I forgot to stretch.
What is it about walking on treadmills that makes my legs tighten up so damn much? I was on the treadmill for twenty minutes, alternating between an easy minute and a half of calm walking followed by thirty seconds of sprinting, and I felt like every muscle in my calves were knots after five minutes. I didn’t have that happen when I used to walk or jog around the neighborhood, and that was on a partially paved, gravely road. Admittedly, I know part of the tension was due to my not stretching properly beforehand, but it’s like my legs are nervous on the treadmill, like they’re primed and tensed for action, ready to leap off the darn thing if the conveyor belt part of it goes haywire.
With the leg knots and the unexpected sprinting in the beginner workout mode, I only managed to read seven pages, but I’m hooked. Next time I’ll try a bike machine or look up hand weight exercises before I go, so I can have my arms alternate between doing reps and holding the book.
