One frozen January evening in 2010, I shoved a pair of pajama shorts, a decade-old sports bra, worn-down sneakers, and an 8-year-old tee shirt from a dorm dance into a backpack and trudged through the Chicago winter to the nearest gym. I mounted a treadmill, suddenly aware that I’d never been on a treadmill before. I ran to the point of total physical exhaustion: two miles.
My paternal grandfather had died suddenly the previous August, and I did not take it well. For several weeks, the only thing I could bring myself to do after dragging my carcass home from my unpleasant subordinate finance job was go into my bedroom, draw the curtains, crawl into my bed wearing all of my clothing including my depressing suntan colored nylons, and watch old David Lynch stuff until I passed out. Every day felt like I was being cruelly and arbitrarily strung by an indifferent musician. I felt passive and replaceable. Things were happening to me; I wasn’t making anything happen. I wondered what it would be like to slip on the ice and hit my head and gently fall into a coma, or to just flicker out of existence.
Walking home alone in late December and feeling even more disposable than usual, I got the incredibly basic idea to fix myself the way depressed people in movies do it: I was going to do something physically difficult. I was going to run a whole marathon. 2010 was going to be a montage! I was wearing bulky boots and tried to halfway jog the last block home. Imagine doing that 1000 times, I thought to myself.
I’d run in high school and jogged rarely (and begrudgingly) since. In the intervening post-collegiate years, I’d spent more time poisoning my body and lungs with various drinkables and inhaleables than taking care of myself. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually gone on a jog. My diet consisted of melted cheese and Diet Coke.
I was going to do it. That was settled. I was going to rearrange my entire life around a thing that I wasn’t sure I even liked.
I didn’t make the first move lightly. Before I put shoes on and punched the treadmill buttons like a curious baby monkey that January night, I followed these maybe-not-that essential preparatory steps. You can follow them, too, if you, like me, are fond of talking yourself into crazy shit.
Step 1: Address your gear situation
No matter what clothes you already own, chances are they aren’t good enough to run in. This thought isn’t based on anything real; this is based entirely on your neurotic visions of a gym populated by people in Outfits, matching tops and bottoms and maybe even sweatbands, judging you in your ratty clothes. They’re committing your face to memory, the Sexy Gym People, so that the next time they run into you, they can laugh in your face.
Clearly, you need new clothes. While limping into Lululemon and dropping hundreds on stretchy candy colored tank tops you’re just going to sweat in might appeal to your wallet’s death wish, head instead to Old Navy, where there is plenty of perfectly good workout gear that costs a lot less. Which means you can buy about five shirts and three pairs of stretchy leggings and maybe even a sports bra for the cost of one pair of Lululemon pants. So you buy 10 of each, saving yourself no money and progressing toward your destiny of eventually drowning in your own crap.
On the walk home, you remind yourself that a jog isn’t a catwalk and a treadmill isn’t a runway. Gym people are too focused on themselves to compare themselves to you, and the only people out during prime jogging time on weekend mornings are people who who have spent the previous night making very bad decisions, serious church people, and other runners, and none of those groups is particularly known for being fashion forward. Oh well. At least you own something that isn’t coffee stained.
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