Today I had to do my first pre-work run in a long time. I have a schedule for my training, and while I'm going to run at night whenever I can, if I have evening plans then it's gotta be a 6:30 wake up. Or a painful, drawn out 6:52, in the case of this morning. As I hauled/peeled/forced/yanked/winced (choose your own awful verb!) my way out of my warm, fluffy duvet, I looked outside at the rain with my squinty eyes—a definite treadmill day.
A moment's pause to thank my dad for not forcing me to give that treadmill back, even though he has now moved into a house that obviously has the space for it. Also to my roommates, for letting me keep it behind the couch in the living room (an interior decorator's dream), despite the fact that we don't have a lot of space for it. And a special nod to my iPhone case, for bravely protecting my phone against the brutal face of the subway floor while i just dropped it mid-paragraph. I digress.
I got on the treadmill. For the first lap or two I wasn't even fully conscious that I was running. Once I woke up a little, I realized I was trying to run kind of quietly (which you definitively cannot do on a treadmill, I know this). I didn't want to wake the downstairs neighbour. Then, my mind flashed back to two nights ago; our new basement neighbour's Incredible Howling Beagle (an interesting superhero name, no?) left alone at 12:30, baying as though the world would soon end. But end it did not. IHB was still howling continuously at 1:30 am. And 2:30. And 3:30. And shoot me.
Banging out my run through the ceiling suddenly didn't seem so bad. And by the time the song from 28 Weeks Later came up on my playlist, I was flying. The song is called In The House In An Instant, by the way: the best building crescendo song of all time. It is not for use outside at night, however, because if you have seen the movie, you'll become convinced that you're running for your life from the 'infected'.
Twenty minutes later I had a text message from downstairs, asking what that loud banging was, and wasn't it "a little early for that." A little early indeed, neighbour. Ah, poetic retribution.
run outside. treadmills are for sissies.
ReplyDeleteSo--
ReplyDeleteWhen I was still at my old apartment, there was a guy who lived above me that ran at weird hours of the night, 2-3 times a week. As late as midnight on weekdays, sometimes 2:30 or 3 in the morning, the rhythmic thumping would begin. I only ever saw the guy occasionally, but it used to annoy the crap out of me.
One evening, when I was admittedly a little inebriated, I saw him in the back alley smoking a joint. I said straight to his face: "hey man, listen, can you try not running at 3 in the morning?"
He paused for a second, seemed to realize what I was saying, then responsded with a straight face: "nah bro, that's just me fucking my girl. Our bed pushes up against the wall when we're going at it"
I never talked to him again.