The GPS Dot of the Treadmill

Being an obese kid made gym class kind of a nightmare.  There were the required 1 mile runs that always ended the same way.  I would have a grandiose notion that taking off at a decent speed I could somehow magically run that 8:30 mile like everyone else, when in reality  I could barely walk a 15 minute mile. These runs always ended the same way.  A few yards in, I would sputter and wheeze and end up walking the lion's share of that mile.  I would try to run as best I could, but always had to stop and walk.  If I was really lucky, I could break that 13 min mark, but not without enduring the taunting and teasing from my classmates who had long finished their mile and were now witnessing this ridiculous show of physical prowess.  It was the 80's.  Most schools had the token fat kid, and in my school it was me. Childhood obesity was not what it is now in the digital age... but that is a topic for another time.

 So, I guess that is why when I started this journey into wellness 5.5 years ago, I chose the treadmill. I knew two things.  I could walk, and the tread could control my pace so I would not have the humiliating walk that followed me trying to run at speeds my body clearly could not handle.  It totally worked too.  I worked my way up from a slow 3.5 mile walk to jogging base paces and beyond.  Yeah, I saw those posts where people referred to it as the "dreadmill".  I suppose they were just haters because at the time I didn't get it. What I knew was I was on it and for the first time in my adult life I was succeeding.

This week I had the opportunity to do what us moms do best.  I got to sit down with my oldest son, who is now 23 and trying to find his way in an adult world.  He still seems to have one foot firmly planted in late adolescence and one tippy toe into the adult world, spinning his wheels while trying to figure out how to get his whole self propelled forward.  What he needed was what most kids need his age.  He needed to see exactly where he came from, figure out where he is, but more importantly set concrete goals to open up the road ahead to figure out just what this adult world held for him.

This led me to think about that treadmill again.  Yes, I could control my pace.  No, I didn't have the embarrassment of misjudging my own abilities and having to walk.  However, if I am being honest, all along, the OCD in me was tripped up with trying to use my fitness tracker while I was on the damn thing.  My watch never matched what the treadmill had to say, and the GPS was downright confused.  It would draw lines on a map of me covering the same 5 feet until the map simply had a dot on it.  No beginning and no end, just a dot with step distances that never actually matched what I was doing.  Yeah, I could track "progress" through my fitness tracker app, but knowing it was not altogether totally accurate was constantly frustrating.

I found myself using this as an example to explain things to my son.  Entering the adult world and figuring it all out was kinda like using a GPS on a treadmill.  You keep looking for guidance, for some indication of where you have been so you can figure out where you are going, but in reality you are spinning your wheels, wishing for something better, but are actually in the same place you have always been. 

Over time, I have come to join the haters of the dreadmill.  I came to understand, leaving the control of me to outside forces kept me spinning the same belt of complacency and never actually growing into new destinations.  I have come to prefer to run outside.  I get pretty GPS pictorials showing me where I have been and where I am headed and  I don't have the white noise of the fitness tracker versus a machine.  Do I still screw up my pacing, go too fast and have to walk?  Of course I do, although, now I do it intentionally.  How fast can I really go, and for how long?  This fall I actually pulled off an 8:30 pace for a brief time, yeah it hurt a little, but I  had the most glorious wheezy walk when it was over, because I knew in that moment, I was way more capable than I ever gave myself credit for.  Something the control of a treadmill could never give me.

I think the trick is for us to start to recognize that at times what starts out as progress,  becomes just like us trying to use a GPS on a treadmill.  When we hit that wall of belt spinning complacency with white noise fueling frustration, it is time to step off the machine, out of the fluorescent lighting, and enter the world relying more on the proverbial GPS to show us where we have been and where we are headed and go hard at our goals without the fear of looking silly.  I venture to say in that space we will begin to realize what lies ahead is so much better than the GPS dot covering the same 5 feet for miles. Only in that place will we see the best is truly yet to come.