Inspiration by treadmill

  The latest sloppy winter mess finally drove me to a place I never thought I would go,the treadmill. Tuesday night after work I was watching the weather forecast and I decided if I woke up and it was really messy I'd give it a try.I have listened to my friend James speak highly of treadmill training in the face of uncertain weather so how bad could it be, he's an intelligent man and dedicated runner with some excellent marathon finishing times.
  I further stoked my enthusiasm with some new songs on the ipod and thoughts of running free of all my winter gear in a nice warm place with dry feet the entire time,a welcome relief after months of pruned appendages.I arrived at the gym early selected a sturdy looking machine in the back row with a good view of the dozen or so televisions and started poking at the buttons to fire it up. This is when some alarm bells should have started going off, the timer maxed out at  ninety nine minutes, no consideration for someone wanting to get a long run in.Oh well I guess I can restart at a nice even mileage say 10 miles, poked a few more buttons for a nice steady pace of 8.13 per mile and away I went this was going to be a piece of cake. Ten minutes passed I had found the incline button and set a steady grade of 4(whatever that means but it felt good) and was questioning myself as to why I hadn't tried this before,so nice and warm.Twenty minutes in and I realized all the daytime t.v. shows were about buying, building or renovating your home,one t.v. playing the same 2 minutes of news over and over and a cooking channel of all things, not overly exciting after all. Thirty minutes in cranked the tunes,who cares about some rich guy trying to decide which three million dollar home he likes more but my feet are warm. One hour in my wife waves as she comes in to see her trainer,this will help pass some time, I can watch and maybe pick up some tips for core exercises from what my wife has shown me this trainer has some excellent ones that really work. Nope they are around the corner in another area,so much for that idea.Two hours in the t.v.'s are driving me crazy the clock seems to have stopped and I think when I'm not paying attention the treadmill is counting miles backwards.
  It really fell apart from there,I managed to finish the planned marathon but it was pretty ugly,at twenty miles I actually dropped the pace to get it done and by the time I hit twenty six I was begging for wet feet and a cold wind blowing in my face. Would I do it again? Not for awhile but in hindsight I can see some benefits, definitely an advantage to the ground controlling your pace for keeping things steady and your feet stay dry, that's about it.

  Today I hit the trails feeling inspired,it didn't matter how wet my feet were I was outside and felt alive. It started out cool and lightly snowing but postcard perfect to look at, a couple other sets of footprints on the main trail but none as I headed up the escarpment. It warmed up after an hour and started to rain lightly but that's OK it was way better than the treadmill.Two hours in the snow was soft and several spots I broke through the ice crust under the slush to find myself shin deep in water but again yesterdays treadmill experience had me laughing off any discomfort. At the end of the day I squeezed in thirty six kilometres I was cold wet and extremely happy, who knows that treadmill might be good for something after all.

  The good news is everything was slippery so the ground and rocks were the least of my worries.