Yeah, long distance running is part of my training plan.

 What’s that? What distance am I up to? Well, none. Zero miles a week. It’s just a training plan. I’m not actually doing it. I mean—do you move your family and possessions into an architectural drawing and live there? No, for that you’d have to build the house.

Unless building the house would mean giving up pizza and beer, in which case you might just say screw it, I’ll frame this architectural drawing and hang it on the wall so I can admire it, but meanwhile I’m just going to work on learning to accept the big, fat, blubbery house I live in now, and not get down on it every time it eats a microwave burrito between meals.

Sorry, my analogy is going off the rails a little bit here.

Anyway, yeah, it’s a pretty sweet treadmill. It’s got that “Power Fold” feature, so I can just click this one switch and it folds into the upright position to take up less floor space when I’m not using it. And let’s face it, even people who run every day spend more time not running. And I’m not one of those people. This thing’s been folded up in the upright position almost since I got it.

It’s got that “Whisper Weave” belt, too, so it’s super quiet. I mean, just listen to it. You hear anything at all? No, it’s totally quiet. And it’s pretty quiet when I turn it on, too, or so I assume. It does squeak a little from time to time, but that’s just because it has mice. I was sitting on the treadmill a couple days after I bought it, eating a bucket of fried chicken, and some of the greasy skin fell in there, and that attracted them, I guess. So that was totally my fault.

So at first, when I was making my training plan, I had to decide what kind of running to put on it: Running on a treadmill or just running outside. And on the one hand, running outside seems like the simpler choice. You just go out there and… you know, run, I guess. And you don’t hardly need to buy any equipment. Just shoes and maybe a fanny pack for your keys.

But then I thought: What if I run really far, like three quarters of a mile or so, and need to stop? I’ll be three quarters of a mile from home. On foot. That’s no good. On a treadmill, if I got tired or cramped or came down with the trots, I could just step off and be home. Plus, you can’t hang your laundry up to dry on a fanny pack. So it was really a no-brainer for me.

Yeah, one of these days I might just enact that training plan. We’ll see. My doctor says my legs are atrophied from disuse, though. Too many hours in the gaming chair, I suppose. So I wouldn’t want to start in exercising before they heal up from that.

It’s a nice plan, though, you gotta admit. I’d almost hate to ruin it by trying to follow it. I had fun, though, just designing it and buying the gear.

Speaking of, you want to see the free weights and cross-country skis I got?

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