The treadmill from hell

I have a love hate relationship with treadmills. They are useful tools used in the right way. They are useful for gym warm-ups. They are useful for examining running form, or at least that's what you can claim when looking at your gorgeous self in the mirror as you run. If you get bored with running (I don't!), you can watch videos as you run. They are warm in the winter, although I'd suggest you just wear more layers if cold is your problem. They are reasonably low impact if you are recovering from injury, but again, they probably aren't as good as a muddy field (some of you will have to find a dictionary with the appropriate definition of 'good' for that one).

Treadmills have their place.

The treadmills in my usual gym are fairly friendly beasts. You hit the 'Quick start' button and off it goes straight away with no fuss. You can then up the speed, set an incline, and ignore its pleas for you to enter your weight. That's all there is to a treadmill. Running is simple. Running on a treadmill is simple.

Or so I thought!

I had a session with my personal trainer this morning at another gym. I climbed on the treadmill to do my warm up and found myself in a fight for supremacy with its control system. This treadmill had attitude!

First off I hit the 'Quick start' button. Problem. This was not a 'Quick start' button, but a piece of text on the control panel which read: "For Quick Start, press the Enter key". Hmm.

I pressed the 'Enter' key.

Nothing happened.

Why wasn't I moving? There was now some flashing text asking me to enter my weight. I pressed 'Cancel'. No change. Apparently the first thing this machine wanted to know was not "how fast?", but "how heavy?", and it was not going to be swayed.

I typed '70' and hit the enter key.

Nothing.

I was now being asked to enter a time! So its next piece of critical information required is "how long?". Where is the free-spirit attitude of leaving your front door and just running? I now had to think about this. Was this infernal contraption going to stop when I hit the end time? Why does a session on a treadmill have to have a hard end point? I was not liking the fascistic attitude it was giving me.

I entered '20'.

Nothing.

What now?

Now I have to enter a 'program'. We had a choise of 'Aerobic', 'Fatburn', 'Hills' and various other options. None of them said 'Running'! I pressed 'Manual', half dreading that it was going to start quoting me its entire user manual, but at least hoping I could at last get running.

Nothing.

Finally it was asking for a speed. At last! I triumphantly entered 11.0, and off we went.

Well nearly.

This idiot contraption was creeping up to speed slowly. I was walking leisurely when what I really wanted to be doing was RUNNING!!!

After what seemed like an eternity I was finally up to a magnificent 11kph. I now tapped the incline up to 1°.


On the off chance that there are any treadmill designers reading this (maybe treadmill designers regularly type "treadmill design" into Google?), please take note. Running is a simple action. As a sports corporation once said you "just do it!". Why do these machines insist on tying you into a 'program'.

Treadmills have their place, but treadmills should know their place.