Speed is Work.

The next time you think you're bored on a treadmill, try sprinting on it for 3 minutes at race pace and then hopping off the flying belt and dropping to the ground for push-ups so rapid you can almost hear the urban-camo-wearing-rittenhouse-boot-camp-instructor-making-$35/class screaming in your ear.  Stop pushing up approximately 30 seconds after you begin.  Crumble to the ground.  Repeat the entire fiasco at least 7 more times.  Ideally, make this the second workout of your day so that when you peel yourself off the ground after that last, personal-record-setting set of push-ups, you are certain that only a hot shower and dinner stand in the way of what will certainly be motionless sleep. 

Do not mess with an iPod before, during or after this workout.  There is no time to coordinate a playlist or locate Lady Gaga amongst all of the other "L's" in "Artists."  This workout is fluid and exists largely without a full pause.  That is to say that even when you are staggering past the other members of your gym in the direction of the only working water fountain or when you are unraveled in a child's pose at the base of your treadmill with your left cheek placed pleasantly on the gym carpet (where you do realize this is a horrifying place to rest your exposed skin but are nonetheless powerless to move), your muscles are twitching and you should be stretching them just before you get back on the treadmill and begin another three minute sprint.

Watching the time tick down and stop after your final set is as triumphant as crossing a finish line - ever in sight, ever tangible -  ragged and gasping for the air your last push on the make believe course stole, you come to a stop and inhale.  Exhale. Fold in two.  Pick up your head, neck and shoulders from your knees.  Slowly.  And back off the treadmill until your feet, on solid ground, are able to glide you away from the first of many  speed workouts and into thirty more push-ups as sweat drips off your nose in perfect little drops onto the same place on the carpet where your cheek rested and you think of Gene Hackman reminding you that "[these] practices are not designed for your enjoyment."