Look what lives in our basement now. I’ve been wanting one for ages, seriously doing price comparisons and reading reviews for the past 4 years. For whatever reason, we reached the tipping point. Maybe it was my need to revert (after next week anyway!) to a more carefully controlled and scaled-back running schedule in order to try to heal my bursitis. Maybe it was the impending cold wet fall gloom and the narrow slushy highway of winter. Maybe it was definitively getting Sophie on-side in the treadmill camp. Anyway, there is is.

So here it is, squashed into the basement. The hope is that with the construction of a garage we’ll be able to get a bit of the junk out of the basement and clear room to both walk to the door and run on the treadmill. For the time being it’s either/or, and the treadmill folds up to allow one to get to the seldom-used back door. It doesn’t have fancy internet connectivity or a full-colour tablet with terrain-mapping or many other bells and whistles. It is quiet, and strong, and has the basic functionality we wanted. So theoretically after Sufferfest and any other fall hiking I ill-advisedly decide to do, I can start gently trying to rehab my Achilles area. It’s quiet enough that Sophie can use it in the mornings and any noise we hear is quiet enough to be in the “comforting white noise” category.

Already I’m amazed at how it allows me to fit running in more easily. So much of my week is spent knowing I have one or another child to pick up sometime in the next hour. Without the treadmill, I couldn’t run at those times, since running would take me away from home and phone range for the better part of an hour. Now I can just take that window of opportunity to hop on the treadmill. If the phone rings, so be it: I hop off, answer, and then drive to town to retrieve whichever teen or pre-teen needs a ride. If the phone doesn’t ring, I can finish a nice 5k while watching my way through a Downton Abbey rerun.