Saturday, February 11, 2006

When is a running machine not a running machine?

Back from Asia overnight on KLM, having seemingly avoided catching Avian Flu and having a rest day today. No other reason than that I am feeling tired, a little jet lagged and am looking forward to running 27km tomorrow on the long run. Having said that the last three runs, on hotel running machines, totalling around 30km felt like three times that distance. How anyone could possibly do all their marathon training on a treadmill defeats me. It is so boring - and you get very hot and sweaty as you are not moving forward hence you don't sweat properly. Well, you do sweat properly, you just stay very very sweaty! Yuk. And even the bank of tv's positioned at nose height in these hotel gyms have nothing on worth watching. There is only so long that you can watch CNN Asia Today programmes.

And, it has to be asked, but why do 90% of all people who go on a hotel gym running machine, just walk? It is very annoying when you want to get on a treadmill and they are booked out by people walking. Walking at what can best be described as at a "steady pace" and doing it for 45 minutes at a time (hanging onto the heart rate monitor bars and setting the incline at +4 to make it really worth it.....). For heavens sake it is called a running machine! One of the best ways I found to get over my boredom was as I got on the running machine, glance over and see how far Mr or Mrs Walker had walked and try to catch them up. I found yesterday that I got on as the guy next to me had walked 2.4km and it took me 30 mins to catch him up - if you get what I mean. I understand that some people must walk to get exercise, but surely hotels should keep one or two running machines for the purpose that they were intended.

Only ten weeks to go to the London Marathon so best start to slow down on the chocolate biscuits and ramp up the long runs beginning tomorrow.

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