Today, I Killed a Treadmill.

It's "tempo" Tuesday, so I decided to head to the gym at lunch to do my 4k run. I bought the new Jenn Grant CD last night thinking it would be good to run to. I was right.

I did my 5 minute warm up at an easy pace, then turned it up to my tempo pace of 6.3 mph, or about 5:56 min/km. I'm not sure if any of you are as electrically charged as I am this time of year, but I have a terrible time with getting shocks. Actually, this morning as I got out of bed, I was seeing sparks in the dark due to the lovely warm fleece sheets I have on my bed. So every few minutes, my leg hits the metal on the treadmill and I get a lovely shock.

Fifteen minutes in and I'm doing ok. I'm loving the new CD. It's really fun music and helped pass the time. Then the last five minutes of the tempo portion (aimed for 20 minutes at tempo today with 5 warm up and 5 cool down) hurt. I couldn't ignore the timer on the treadmill. I tried. I watched the people lined up to sign up for a class. Then as I distracted myself, I'd bump the treadmill and get shocked back to my reality.

Once my tempo portion was up, I slowed the belt back down to a comfortable pace. Nice. I can do this. Five more minutes and I can go stretch. Then I realized I hadn't been shocked in a while and thought I'd touch the metal so the electricity didn't build any more. The treadmill stopped. Dead. The screen flashed "malfunction. contact support. malfunction."

But I need to finish my run! I've not yet cooled down, so I'm dripping sweat, heart racing, wondering if I just jump onto the next one over or go report it. Ya, I'm just jumping ship and starting the next one. Just as I decide, it starts working again. Ok. Good. I restart it and bring it back up to my cool down run speed. Then just as I'm getting back into it, I knocked my iPod off the ledge on the treadmill. Ear phones are still in, and the iPod goes flying. Graceful as I am, I managed to avoid stepping on it. Stopped the treadmill again, and rescued my iPod. Start the treadmill again. Right, now how long did I cool down? I have no idea.

But, the run is done. Yay!