This has less to do with eating right than it does with me being a doof on the treadmill yesterday after work. I hope it makes you laugh.

I wear glasses because my vision up-close is horrible. I’m far-sighted. When I run, I don’t wear glasses because I can typically see anything past about three or four feet in front of me with clarity, but anything within that range is blurry. I can’t read numbers on my watch, for example, unless they are huge. Anyway, I set out to run on our treadmill last night (it’s nice to run indoors with AC and not contending with walkers, dogs, kids, insects, etc), and I decided to use the Quick Run feature. You push the number corresponding to the mph you want to run, and it starts the treadmill immediately. Only, I made a mistake, and instead of pressing the number for the speed, I pressed the number for degrees of incline. The treadmill responded by starting me running at 1 mph, and I thought to myself, this is weird. I hit the 6 and we’re going 1. I thought maybe I had to press 6 a second time, only the second time I pressed it, I pressed the right 6 (which was for speed). Now, I was running at a 6 degree incline at 6 mph.

Normally, 6 mph is a slow and comfortable run for me, but this was tough. Very tough. I was getting tired quickly, more winded than usual, and my left knee started hurting. I thought to myself, “Wow, not running as much has really taken a toll on me!” I decided I needed to stop for a moment due to the knee pain. That’s when I noticed that I was running at a pretty severe incline. I immediately set it to 0 degrees, started back up at 6 mph, and I felt like I was running with wings on my shoes. After that hellish half mile, I was flying and even raising the speed on the treadmill to run faster.

So, maybe in the future, I’ll incorporate some inclines here and there to help me build strength, but I’ll also be more careful in the future to make sure I’m pressing the speed button and not the incline button. That was silly of me.