Treading Away The Boredom

Abraham Lincoln once said "It is those who run on a treadmill who become leaders. Power is not a race but rather a steady progression forward and upward." In fact, many historians claim that right up until the moment he began to give the Gettysburg Address, ol' Abe was on his treadmill doing his daily run.* Well, Mr. Lincoln, rest assured, that I for one much prefer running on treadmills than running outdoors. Never one to voluntarily socialize with people my own age (or any age for that matter), I have always preferred running in the controlled confines of a gym where I need not worry about the weather, traffic, or whether I will be discovered to have played hooky from work!

Many-a-runner who I meet are at first shocked that I would try and interrupt their run to talk to them and then shocked by the fact that I actually would prefer to run in a stationary position on a treadmill. However, dear readers, I have devised many useful and outside-the-box strategies to do away with the much feared boredom aspect that is inherent in treadmill running. While I have no doubt that I could sell these techniques to the running public and ascend to the throne heretofore occupied by the infomercial likes of the inventor of the rotisserie chicken machine and the fellow who makes that thing that does away with scratches on cars, I am, at my core, a man of the people. And so it is, that I give to you today, Mr. Petes' "Boredom-Be-Gone" treadmill routines.

At the heart of my techniques is the idea of breaking down your treadmill exercise into tiny increments whereby the runner forgets about the overall duration of the run, and rather, focuses on the next small increment. While you, dear reader, can choose how long each increment is that best suits your workout, my preference is to break a treadmill run into 3-5 minutin increments or .3-.7 miglia each. So, without further ado, I present to you my "Boredom-Be-Gone" techniques (all rights reserved, copyright 2008):

1)I usually like to make a playlist (either from iTunes or using the iPod's on-the-go capability)of songs that are ONLY 3-4 minutins, 4-5 minutins or 5+ minutins. Under this "Mr. Petes' Timed Mixes" technique, your run can now be broken into segments of either 3, 4 or 5 minutins at a time (you can also make each segment around .3-.5 miglia depending on your speed). In breaking down your treadmill workout into these increments, not only do you now know how many songs you have left but you also have something to look forward to every 3, 4 or 5 minutins. Like the little leprechaun looking for his pot of gold under the rainbow, you, dear reader, will now be able to find that little pot of gold after every 3, 4 or 5 minutins of your now exciting treadmill workout

2) This next technique, which I shall call the "Mr. Petes' Treading to Organization" technique, assumes that your capacity to remember information while running is at least verging on the moderate. As of this writing, I have 5,635 awesome songs in my iTunes library, many of which I have rarely (if ever) listened to. My extreme love of all things drums n' bass has manifested itself in this fact that my iTunes library is cluttered with many-a song that I probably won't like if I ever listen to them in the first place. However, not wanting to waste the money used to purchase the songs (primarily from fear of the wrath of my dopeness wife CVSW upon her learning of my wasteful spending habits), I devised a strategy whereby you can listen to snippets of many of these heretofore silent songs and will then be able to determine whether or not their deletion from the iTunes library can be accomplished guilt free. As with the Mr. Petes' Timed Mixes technique, you, dear runner must first make a playlist (through iTunes or on-the-go)for your upcoming treadmilling containing ONLY those songs you have as yet not listed to. Because you cannot predict your opinion of any of the songs, my technique now reccomends that you listen to 2 minutins of each song (you can listen for longer if you like the song, but be wary that the goal of this technique is to listen to the greatest numbers of songs in the exercise timeframe)and then move on to the next one. Now, dear reader, do you remember when I said that this technique requires a moderate capacity for recall? If not, I would suggest you forget this technique already!! If you do remember, here's why. Should you determine that you do not like a song, you must make a mental running (pun intended)list of those songs and, upon your returning to your computer, you can now delete those songs from your library, thereby decreasing the amount of unlistened-to songs while at the same time freeing up some memory on your hard drive (probably to fill it with more songs that eventually will be deleted).

3) Because this posting is getting a tad longer than I wanted, I am going to combine my last two techniques into the banner of the "Mr. Petes' Changing the Course...of Your History" techniques. Unlike the previous two techniques, these ones do not require any sort of playlist limitation or length of time of playing a song requirement. Like the previous two, you can adjust these to suit your running needs, but, as is my practice, I use increments of either one minutin or .10 miglia for these methods. Simply put, after each minutin or .10 miglia run, I like to increase (or decrease) either or both of the incline and speed on the treadmill. However, and this is the essence of thse methods, so listen up, only increase (or decrease) the incline or speed by one unit of measurement (.5% incline or .1mph)since the increments come at you faster than the back of one of those slow runners weighed down by those belts of bottles of water. You must make sure that you don't adjust your run to such an extent that you tire yourself out too early. Because of the shortter increments, however, these techniques really get you focussing on the next one minutin or .1 miglia of your treadmill run rather than how much longer your workout proper must last.

As I mentioned in my introductory posting, my sincere goal is to make this blog an interactive one, full of differing opinions (although mine will always be right)from my differing experiences. That being said, please feel free to let me know if you have also devised some treadmill strategy to ease boredom and increase the deliciousness of the run!! Each of my posts are subject to updating based on your reviews and comments, and no submission is stupid (unless it is really moronic).

As the sun rises here in New York, and my mind drifts to my dopeness treadmill runs to come, I am reminded of a quote I once heard though I cannot remember who said it, "Fore score and 15 miles ago, the treadmills turned on, and, in the moment I stepped on it I knew that I was destined to be a leader!"



* note to reader: All statements in regards to Abraham Lincoln are factually incorrect and only serve to engross the reader and to make this posting more interesting.