The benefits of having a treadmill, or why I have running on the brain.

Me at the finish line to the El Paso Half-Marathon this past Sunday. My official time was 3:12:07.99, which is 19 min and 17 seconds slower than last year.  My shirt says, "Forget the glass slipper. This princess wears running shoes."

Last night at about 11pm, I realized something rather disturbing, and it was that I have running on the brain.  I came to this conclusion when I had been laying in bed for close to 2 hours, and still wide awake.  At that moment, I started thinking, "hmm. I wonder if going for a quick run will help me to get to sleep.  Maybe pounding the pavement will help me to relax my brain enough to quiet my thoughts, and then I will finally be able to drop off."  I even got out of bed long enough to think about the logistics of running at that time of night:

1. Find sports bra
2. Put on running clothes
3. Tape feet
4. Put on shoes
5. Find some sort of light to run by
6. Think of route that would be safe at this time of night
7. Remember house key...

I even thought that Ginger might be egging me on, because she kept getting in my face like she was expecting me to play with her--I obviously wasn't asleep.  After standing in the middle of my room for about 5 minutes of indecision, I crawled back into bed, mainly because I don't have a light that I could run by.  At that moment, I realized that treadmills have a valid place in the grand scheme of things--had I had a treadmill, I seriously would have run for a few miles.

I have to admit, though, that I have a hate-hate relationship with treadmills.  I can run around a track with impunity, and run on a road/local running trail for hours.  And this is in spite of the fact that I often will go out and back several times to get the mileage that I need.  But, put me on a treadmill, and all of a sudden, I feel like this:

Treadmills seem to have copied the same concept for human consumption...

Or maybe like this:

Look at 1:37 of this clip to understand... (on a side note, I really like this movie, especially the Georgio Moroder version which was set to classic rock).

I can run 5-6 miles easy when I am running on the road, but when I step on a treadmill, I end up struggling to finish just one mile!  On top of that, treadmills act like clothes hangers for me--they accumulate clean clothing on their arms and other horizontal spaces, and eventually, they look something like this:

Yes, I owned a treadmill once.  I decided that more hangers used up less space.

So, I'm probably not going to run out and buy a treadmill any time soon.  However, I am planning on buying a head lamp with my next paycheck on the off chance that I get the notion to go running at 11 pm some other night.  Come to think of it, I may just create a bundle of running clothes in one of my drawers so that it is easy to find everything on another night of chronic insomnia.  I need to try it at least once, just to see if it will really help me sleep!