My poor treadmill

Saturday dawned early once more and I headed to the basement for some treadmill fun. The temps outside were a little much, although not as bas as I had anticipated. The run went well with no issues with the exception of the slipping belt on my treadmill. I love my treadmill on long runs. One second after the 99 mins. and 59 secs. mark the treadmill cuts off because there are not five digits for it to display. Having reached this point a number of times I now anticipate the "not as sudden as a power outage" shut down and step off the treadmill to restart the clock. It seems like simple programming for the manufacturer to have set the machine clock up to simply reset to zero at the 100 minutes mark without shutting down the machine. Or maybe it is the engineer's way to say "get off that stupid machine dummy". Anyway, I did not get off but rather ran another 20+ minutes.

Saturday's Run: Treadmill, 16 miles, 2 hours and 3 minutes, 7:41 pace, no HR but I did find my strap(!)

Saturday afternoon we headed off up North to spend the evening with Kelly's dad for skiing up his way Sunday. So no run on Sunday. Instead, we introduced Riley to downhill skiing and got to experience what parenting is all about...a child yelling "wahoo" as she experiences a new, exhilerating thing for the first time. It was awesome. The thing that really helped was a Lucky Bums Sports Harness. If you are going to teach a kid to ski or anything where they need help stabilizing this is the trick.

Monday there was no run. The slipping of the treadmill has progressed to a serious issue, so serious as to make the treadmill dangerous. I diagnosed the issue as a disentegrating motor drive belt (!), hence all the black powder over everything. So parts are on order (expedited). And to think I just heaped all this praise on this machine last week...however, the fact remains that this thing has chugged along for 5 years of pounding with not so much as a dab of treadmill lube!

Today was a lunch run. Good, quality run with Ethan and Jim. Ethan left us after about four miles and Jim and I had a great run, as we always do. The first couple miles averaged a 7:30 pace with the last few+ at 7:15.

Today's run: South Freeport, 5.7 miles, 41:31, 7:19 pace, Avg. HR 148 bpm (felt strong)

Thursday night I am planning on heading out with a few fellow marathoners+ for a viewing of the Spirit of the Marathon. Check out your local listings to catch this encore presentation.

And for fun...