The Ghost in the Machine

Posted at 8:14 AM, Sunday, September 11, 2005

So every other day, and at weekends, I do high intensity cardio down at the gym.  Basically, that involves getting on the treadmill, and working my pace up until I have a heart rate of 150 bpm.  It's normally exhausting but quite easy, as the machines take care of things for you, altering the speed and incline to keep the rate fairly constant.  And that got me thinking...we all rely on machines.  It doesn't matter what we do, we just rely on them too much.  From being woken up in the morning to driving to work to making that first cup of coffee, it doesn't matter...we all rely on machines, and we really do rely on them without thought.  Unless you're Amish of course.

And something happened yesterday that made me realise that maybe the Amish have got it right after all, because yesterday, a machine tried to kill me.  Now I'm not talking about cyborg Terminator stuff here, for that would be just silly, but I am talking about a machine that, towards the end of my cardio workout, decided that it would severely up the ante on me.

Let me quickly explain that in order for me to maintain a heart rate of 150 bpm, I have to walk a little over 4 mph on an incline of around 9-10%.  Doing that for an hour generally leaves me feeling exhausted but overall good, and yesterday was turning out to be no exception.  At around the 45 minute mark though, things decided to turn ugly.

I was minding my own business, pacing it out and watching a movie on the television, when I decided to take a drink of water.  Now, that meant taking my hands off the sensors, and so for a brief moment, the machine had no idea as to what my heart rate was.  As I do this all the time, I thought nothing of it, but maybe this time was one time too many, and the machine got pissed off...I don't know, and I don't think I'll ever know.  After quenching my thirst, I placed my hands back on to the sensors, and continued to watch the movie safe in the knowledge that the machine would keep things firmly under control.  I didn't notice the incline change at first, as I was so absorbed in the film.  I did notice, however, that I suddenly had to pick my pace up, until I was in that uncomfortable zone between fast walking and jogging...you know, where you sort of have to combine the two and you end up looking like you're not quite in control.

WTF was going on?

I looked down to see what the deal was, only to find the incline had maxed out at 15%, and so now the speed was increasing.  "What the Hell?", I thought, as the treadmill upped the speed once again.  And then I noticed that my heart rate was measuring at just 60 bpm.  I think the only words I had available to me at the time were "Uh oh", as the speed continued to climb.  Now, there is a stop button on the machine, but as I was frantically scanning the console, it seemed to magically disappear.  I took my hands off the sensors, and then returned them, in the hope of getting a normal reading.  Apparently, I was now down to just 57 bpm.  Confusion was starting to set in as my fatigued legs were desperately scrambling to keep up with the pace.  Maybe the sensors were dirty with my sweat?  In a last ditch effort, I tried wiping the sensors with my towel, as well as drying my palms in the hope of getting a more sensible reading.  As the speed continued to climb, and I mean, I'm really running now, I grasped the sensors and waited for the reading to come up...normally, it takes several seconds to do this, but this time, it felt like I was waiting for the dawning of a new Age to arrive.

And finally, the new Age dawned at 186 bpm.

Mercifully, the machine had decided to return back to 'normal' mode from it's 'kill' setting.  And with that, the pace slowed down, the incline was reduced, and one exhausted Gary would've wiped the sweat that poured from his face, but he didn't dare take his hands off the sensors again.