The Button

I like having a treadmill available to use for mornings like this morning but I don't particularly enjoy running on the treadmill. At 5 this morning, it was 36° and lightly raining. I wasn't interested in being wet and cold (I don't mind cold and I will run in wet and warm) so off to the YMCA I went. Little did I know that I would find yet another reason to dislike the treadmill. My plan, changed when I realized it was raining, was to do a relatively easy 4.5 miler. Even though I was watching and listening to the local news, I get bored on the t'mill so I started at 7 mph, bumped it to 7.2 mph after 1 mile, then up to 7.5 mph after 2 miles.

Well, watching the news, I wasn't paying quite as close attention to my running as I otherwise would have done and I outran the treadmill. That's normal for me but I usually notice. Not today -- I ran right up into the front rail. Well, you know what's right in the middle of that front rail, don't you? Yes, the Emergency Shut-off Button. Right, the one that when hit, immediately stops the belt dead in an attempt to throw you off the front -- and which then resets, erasing all your data.

I hit The Button! I managed not to get tossed off into the elliptical machines in front of me but for a split second I could not, for the life of me, figure out what had happened. What a pain. I had just glanced at the mileage so I knew that I had run 2.93 miles but I had only the vaguest of ideas about the time (though I think I can figure it out). I pushed Start and nothing. Oh yeah, the thing has to reset. So, there I stand, huffing and puffing, waiting for it to reset and let me run again. What a pain! Give me the outdoors.

The only good thing was that, in the few seconds that it took to reset, I got my second wind and was able to finish a total of 4.6 miles feeling pretty good.

The predictions are for rain again in the morning. So, I may get another shot at The Button tomorrow. Joy!

Run well, y'all,
Bob