A shimmy and a shake.

The low-frequency din of a room full of electronic cardiovascular equipment all running; machines plugged into the wall, people plugged into the machines, gears turning, fans blowing, fluorescent light bulb buzz hiding behind the metallic cacophony. We had a snowstorm last night, couldn’t run outside, well I could have, but my constitution is more like Ivan Drago and less like Rocky Balboa. (I didn’t want my fingertips to get cold.)

Went to the gym, plugged myself in with the others, pressed the giant green “on” button on the treadmill and started running. A second story vantage point, looking down on passerby, a hardly busy street covered in snow and the darkness of evening. Right foot down, jump, left foot down, jump, right foot down, jump, left foot down, running on a treadmill is so different than running on the street.

After five minutes I begin to internalize the rhythm of the machine, the gears, the whirring of the track’s loop. I try to blur my brain the same way I blur my eyes, I take all the sounds and make a cadence of them, to match my stride. Gaze fixed on a hubcap across the street, half buried in snow, broken up and muddy. My run the endless pursuit of that hubcap. Someone walks past, outside, distracts my attention and I follow them, with my eyes. My body starts to feel tired, my stride a little strained, and then I remember the hubcap, the noise, the whirring, I readjust my gaze and again I’m part of the machine.

In my mind I play with the muscles that are doing the work. I imagine my hip flexors as being the only part of my body that’s capable of lifting my legs; instead of the thighs pulling, the caves pushing, the hips take over and in one graceful and momentous stretch, lift up the entire length of my leg. Down again, up again, down again bending, stretching, lifting, gliding. The hum of the track, the beat of my footsteps.

In my mind I go over the length of my spine, straighten it, strengthen it, lean slightly forward, imagine that gravity is pulling me, give my stride over to the tides and to inertia. I pull my forearms in, loosen up my hands, imagine myself as a boxer, weaving in and out, ducking and bobbing, sticking and darting.

Another passerby, another distraction, my gaze wanes and I feel tired, my stride breaks up. I am not part of the machine anymore.

But this time the clock lets me know that there is someone else waiting for the machine, always another person in the wings, an endless stream of young bodies clamoring to burn more calories, make a stomach tighter, lose the flab in the ass.

My legs are mutinous when I jump off the treadmill; in the half hour that we’re allotted they’ve grown used to the rhythm of the track, to the strangeness of not exactly propelling themselves forward. They wiggle and they waver and I feel as if the entire room is sliding sideways. And I vow to stick to the streets and trails when the snow melts.

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