Not gonna do it

My trip up the stairs... Feeling pumped and proud of myself for not passing out on the treadmill earlier, I decided to try the stair stepper (This is very similar to what I used but looks are deceiving). I was intimidated from the get go. I HATE stairs of any kind as I usually fall down them even when stone sober and paying close attention to what the heck I am doing with my feet.

So this started with a mild sweat fit on top of my already heavy sweat fit from walking the treadmill. That's right I said walking on the treadmill. I stood upon the stairs to situate my water bottle and towel, plug in my headphones and tune into the Ellen show on the personal tv programmed into the face of the machine. This took me about 5 minutes to do. Here's why: as you step on the machine to get even near the controls the stairs start to move downward ever so slowly that you don't even notice you moved until you're about to fall off the last step.

After noticing I was moving and saving myself from the humility of blindly falling on the floor I was situated. I touch-screened in my choice of workout (I started with the easiest this time since it is after all a set of stairs). And the motion begins. I was confident after the first couple of seconds when I realized that the machine moves REALLY slow. But I started to focus on the Ellen show in front of me instead of my feet where I should have been looking. Big NONO for a first time use of any machinery. Here was my realization:

There are only three steps visible. The first step comes out of the top almost flat then proceeds to bend into its 90 deg angle. The depth of each step is only enough the support the first 2/3 of my foot. IT"S NARROW! So stepping too soon causes you to over step the crease line where it folds bending your foot backwards in half. So I hesitate and choose my next step up carefully trying to keep my foot from contorting or from falling backwards off the dang thing since there isn't enough room to stand. This worked for one step them I realized that once the second step rotates down to the third position it immediately starts to unfold from its 90deg angle to return into the machine from whence it came. This causes your lower foot to slide ever so sneaky away from the rest of your body toward the floor, the opposite direction you're trying to imitate going. Keeping away from the first and third step is impossible as there are only three steps to work with.

So I tried to adjust my positioning in order to catch the first step just after it completes its fold but also before the third step starts transforming into the slip-and-slide of feet. All at the same time using physics and geometry to figure out how to make my foot fit on the step.

I digress... I'm just too uncoordinated to even try this machine again.