Crazytown, Treadmill Hills, and Christmas Trees

Workout: 3 miles on TM, .75 miles on a bitch of an uphill

I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone today. My day started in a tiny, claustrophobic space-age tube and ended with a crazy man falling on me. I also ran after work and on a treadmill, which was probably the weirdest thing of all.

I went to get an MRI as part of a research study I'm doing through work. It has something to do with facial recognition, although I'm not sure what. What I do know is that it required me to remain ridiculously still for almost two hours and look at cute, young babies and baby animals and old, fat people. Apparently staying totally still in a tube for two hours makes you tired. In order to keep me awake, the evil scientists made me push a button every time the series of photos repeated. Little did they know (actually, they probably knew-I'm not that smart), I had figured out that it repeated every fifteen photos so I was a total boss and got to zone out a bit. But the study didn't have anything to do with me pushing a button, that was just a very necessary way to keep me awake. Anyway, I walked out $80 richer but a million times more tired, and I never really got over it.

Since I was too busy curing cancer in the morning, I ran after work. I always used to run in the evening until summer (hell) came and it was 100 degrees after work, but I've only run in the afternoon a couple of times since then so was interested to see how it would go. Well, it sucked. Kind of. I was starving by the time 6:00 rolled around (I stayed late since I had come in late) and felt on the verge of passing out, but I hauled myself upstairs to the gym and busted out a few miles on the treadmill. I was going to run outside, but all day I had heard (what turned out to be flat-out b.s.) rumors about torrential downpours, flooding, the apocalypse... and since I work in a basement, I didn't think to go check it out for myself. Because you care to know, the weather was totally fine.

However, running on the treadmill did have the added bonus of allowing me to make hills for myself. As I mentioned last week, Central Park's hills don't impress me, and I really wanted to get my as- kicked by an incline.

Goal: accomplished. I didn't know what a steep hill on a treadmill was, so I set it for 10. Wow. I was a little embarrassed by my heavy breathing. I sounded like I have a pack-a-day habit. I did a .75 mile warm-up and then did 2 1/2 minutes on a 10 incline followed by 2 1/2 minutes at a 2 incline. I repeated this 3 times then cooled down with a mile. I felt really good after I finished, even though I still feel like my breathing hasn't slowed down entirely. After my jog I did a couple of lifty things and then hit the road.

On my way to the train, I was verbally assaulted by a woman who shrieked "WHAT THE F-CK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!?!" before storming off, which made me feel totally awesome. And on the train, there was a normal, respectable-looking dude in a suit and tie, but he was either a) crazy, b) drunk, or c) both. Probably both. And on acid. The open fly should have been a dead giveaway, but I was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. My goodwill quickly faded when he started yelling about wanting to get to Flatbush and singing about being on the crazy train. He also kept yelling questions on me. I pulled the "I can't hear you even though you're three feet from me and I accidentally made eye contact with you not once, but twice, so you know I know you know I know you're there" move and was going to switch cars at the next stop when some drummer dudes got on. They started playing and this guy immediately got up and started dancing. I have to admit, I was amused. So was everyone else. It was great until we got to Union Square and the dude fell right on top of me. Then I was just pissed. Like I said, it must be a full moon. Or whatever.

Because I've more than fulfilled my whining quota, here are pictures of happy things: Christmas trees!

Christmas tree at work.

This is Gary, our Christmas tree.

Shadows make for nice pictures.

I love Christmas. Now if only the weather gods would bless New York with some snow. Get on it!