I guess running on a treadmill is better than not running at all.

Staying at a hotel for work, I managed to drag myself down to the gym this morning for a run on the treadmills. I’m glad for treadmills when the weather is crappy and I would otherwise not be able to run, but otherwise, I find them running on one to be tedious. This morning, the weather outside looked quite lovely but it was a bit cooler than the running clothes (shorts and a short-sleeved shirt) that I had packed.

So, the treadmill it was.

Although it embarrasses me to admit it, if I am going to be running on a treadmill, I find the interactive features that they all have now to make the experience marginally less tedious. The feature where you can select the interactive video terrain to be me distracting in a good way; it allows me to forget for a few seconds at a time that I am running on a terrible treadmill.

Since all the treadmills are connected to the internet, there is also the feature where you can run against other people around the world. Again, not really a feature I’m looking for, but I find it moderately diverting.

What I noticed this morning is that first, I passed a bunch of people in Australia. Then there was a whole pack of US people. After that, I started running into French and German runners. My guess is that those groupings tend to reflect the times when we are running, and most of the people I was encountering from other countries had headed out for a run after work or later in the evening.