With my novel writing days behind me, I’ve been trying to return to something that more closely approximates a normal routine: going to bed well before 1am, lowering my coffee/espresso intake, and returning to the gym after a month of spotty attendance.  The latter is actually quite important to me because, as anyone who has known me for a while knows, I had been defying a lengthy history of aversion to physical activity until NaNo interrupted.  I have hardly transformed myself into a marathon-running automaton – the longest distance I ever run is a shade over three miles – but this marks such a drastic change in my day-to-day life that I’ve been meaning to remark upon it for some time.  This past Monday, I hit up the treadmill for the first time in two weeks, and here are some thoughts that passed through my mind at the time, distilled into a somewhat more coherent form:

1. There’s beauty in the breakdown, or so sang Frou Frou in that famous song from Garden State.  Chalk it up to vanity, perfectionism, or both, but I always try to keep my appearance at work as immaculate as possible.  As a result, I am constantly wondering about ultimately inane things like, “How badly has the DC humidity screwed with my hair?  Did I just accidentally rub my eyes, thereby smearing mascara all over the place and giving myself that ever-so-chic racoon look?  Rain and foundation are not an ideal combination.”  The gym places a wall of mirrors right in front of the treadmills so that, you know, I can stare at my gorgeous mid-workout self?  But I can’t tell you how much of a relief it is to just not give a fuck that there are unsightly sweat stains all over my shirt because, well, that’s the point.

2. Breathing solves most problems.  In my two years of high school biology, I learned on multiple occasions about aerobic respiration and the Krebs cycle.  When I played lacrosse in ninth grade – yes, yes, laugh away – I used to, during mandatory team runs, meditate on the chemical reactions involved in this process because they reminded me that, as long as I was still madly inhaling oxygen into my lungs, the mitochondria in my trusty cells would use it to create energy, which would help me keep running.  And because I’m a nerd.  Years later, can I recall any of these reactions in particular?  No, but I do remember to keep breathing.

3. Music also solves a lot of problems, if and only if it satisfies certain conditions.  I have spent hours in pursuit of the ideal workout music, and my empirical analysis has produced following conclusion: it must be (1) fast, which for me is 120+ BPM, and (2) loud, deafeningly so.  Satisfy these criteria, song, and you will gain entrance to my exclusive “Gym Music” playlist, even if you are some awful Katy Perry tune that I would never listen to under any other circumstances.  (I atone for this by rocking out to Prokofiev piano concertos during my post-workout commute.)

4. “Pain is fear leaving the body.”  This is one of those stock inspirational sayings that I saw on a lot of sport-related attire in high school, but it does occur to me that there’s a modicum of truth to it.  About fifteen minutes into my run this week, I felt the beginnings of a cramp spasm across my abdomen – a completely expected consequence of not having exercised for the last two weeks, I guess.  Any time I am afflicted by some kind of physical ailment in the middle of my workout, I find myself seized by a momentary panic.  Am I getting sick?  Is my body totally disintegrating on me?  I’ll bet that the super intense guy thoughtlessly sprinting away on his treadmill two down from me doesn’t feel like this.  But then I remember the importance of respiration, tell myself that, baby, I’m a firework, and I keep going.

5. Nothing is as terrible as what I have already endured.  Somehow, I happen upon my most melodramatic musings while in my most physically compromised state.  I don’t necessarily believe that running makes me happy (insert obligatory Legally Blonde reference about exercise, endorphins, and their bearings on the likelihood of homicide here), but it does clear my mind better than just about anything else.  I was in an especially crappy mood on Monday for many reasons – NaNoWriMo withdrawal, for one, was hitting me hard – and the last thing I wanted to do was subject myself to half an hour of voluntary quasi-torture.  At one point in every workout, however, there is a Moment in which I find myself settle into a rhythm of syncopated paces and breaths, hit my stride, and, even though I know I am nothing more than the human equivalent of a hamster scurrying about in its wheel, I feel like I could conquer empires.  Or at least run across one.