ellenoutloud's Blog

Proverbs 16:18 "Pride Goeth Before Destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall."

I’m not altogether certain I was especially haughty but I was particularly proud of myself yesterday morning. Finding the weather a tad airish for outdoor exercising, I got on the treadmill for the first time in quite a while. I was hoping to see some miniscule improvement in my performance.

I was trying the interval training routine I’d seen in Prevention magazine where you alternate treadmill speeds every thirty seconds or so. Supposedly you burn more calories and get a better cardio workout, I just know all that fiddling with the digital readouts passes the time and blunts the monotony of the experience.

I’ve mentioned before that my device faces the wall of the closet and for now it is both dark and confining. I can’t read well while moving, it makes me landsick, so any diversion is welcome.

So I suppose I was feeling pretty full of myself when I completed twenty minutes at speeds of 3.6 to 4.0 mph. I wasn’t huffing and puffing, I could have still sung along with the music emanating from iPod if I’d wanted to, I’d broken a sweat and nothing else, I was doing it – semi-jogging, fast-walking like the big kids do. Yeah, me!

Hold your applause.

Somewhere around the fortieth transition from fast to faster, after the Black Eyed Peas and Bruno Mars, I tripped. It was just enough of a misstep that I lost my momentum, mojo, and balance and was thrown off the stupid beast. Dang. It took forever to land. It felt just like the end of a bad mechanical bull ride except the floors at Billy Bob’s are padded! (So they tell me.)

Let me assure you, the floors of my home office, slash workout cubbie, slash meditation palace, slash writing room are not padded – though many have suggested the entire room should be – I landed hard.

The room has dozens of filing cabinets and it a bank of those metal organizers that finally broke my fall, left thumbnail and haughty spirit.

Ouch.

Oh, I know, I know. When you get thrown off the horse… I got right back on. I set the stupid speed thingie to 3.4 and left it there, and completed my workout alternately left-thumb sucking and rubbing my throbbing right elbow.

As I finished my exercise Lady Gaga was belting out her chorus: “Rejoice and love yourself today, ‘cause baby, you were born this way.”

I humbly admit I most certainly was.

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