This training block, my interval work has moved indoors. Easy runs still happen outside when the weather cooperates, but the hard sessions happen on a treadmill, which some people call the dreadmill.
I expected to hate it. I didn’t.
Outside, the voice gets a vote at every turn. A hill. A stoplight. A gap in the trail where “five is enough” sounds perfectly reasonable. The scenery helps, but it also gives me somewhere to drift.
On the belt, the pace is set before I step on. Nothing to decide, nothing to negotiate. The voice still shows up, but it sounds different. Outside it asks if I should call it good. On the belt it asks if I can finish this.
That’s a better question, because it assumes I’m staying and only wonders about the ending.
My attention on the treadmill changes too. A drifting mind means a drifting stride, and the sides and back of that belt are not forgiving. So I’m more aware of my feet. I give up the view, the distance, a sense of having gone somewhere. I get the time and the work.
Some days I step off feeling like I never left the room.
Then it followed me home.
I already have belts in my marriage. Cooking, dishes, keeping the house running, and I don’t negotiate those. The pace was set long ago, I get on, and it gets done. Nobody applauds. I like being the guy who’s good at that. Dependable. Steady. It’s a position I’ve held for years, and it has paid me well in self-respect.
The negotiation lives somewhere else. Pam is more available now and I’m holding a book. Or I’m tired and the bed is calling. The voice tries to get a full vote, and it argues well. Reading is good for me. Sleep is good for me. Both are true, which is what makes it such a good argument.
So the time that matters most to the marriage is the time I’ve been least likely to protect. And it’s the only one with no belt under it.
I let it stay open because open feels like freedom, and a fixed commitment feels like losing a choice. But a fixed pace doesn’t shrink the run. It ends the daily argument, and that argument was costing me more than the pace ever did.
Freedom is the polite answer. The honest one is that moving in close to Pam, on purpose, with nothing to do but be there, puts me in front of something the dishes never do. She might be warm. She might be tired. She might be hurt about something I haven’t noticed. I can’t set the pace on any of that. Reading never asks me anything. Sleep is a healthy escape.
That’s what my avoidance protects me from. When I ask what the anxiety is telling me, it says I might get this wrong.
The adult move is deciding earlier, when I’m calm, and letting that decision carry me when I’m not. Willpower at mile two is the voice’s home turf, so I don’t take it there. A standing time with Pam goes on the calendar this week, like the interval session, and when the time comes, I get on.
The anxiety still shows up. Deciding ahead of time takes away my exit and leaves the anxiety right where it was. So I stay in the room with it, and I stay in the room with her.
Some nights will be warm. Some will be quiet, and a few will be awkward. I don’t get to grade the evening. I get to show up and stay on.
The trail gets the credit. The belt builds the engine.
Where in your marriage is there still no belt, and what is leaving it open protecting you from?
