The Treadmills Have it in for Me!

I swear to god! It’s a plot!

Some may remember a few weeks ago when I reported about the treadmill that shut down on me after giving me a light electric shock. Well, today I had a similar experience, sans shock. This time I had no warning, it just shut down quickly and flashed “motor disabled” across my readout. Of course, the “motor disabled” indication came after the machine had already pitched me forward. I mean, I’m the one who usually stands up for the treadmill. I’ve sung its praises on posts and comments here on The Loop. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever…. oh, wait, yes I have referred to it as the “dreadmill.” Maybe just once. Shoot.

It’s a good thing warmer weather is just around the corner.

Today I put in a 5 mile run on the lovely treadmill, wonderful machine that it is. It was a so-so run for me. My achilles started acting up a few times during the run. Call me stupid, but I ran through it at a slower pace when it tightened up. Twice the discomfort/tightness (I wouldn’t go so far as to call it “pain”) went away after a few minutes. The third time I just couldn’t loosen up the tendon so I stopped and walked over to the stretching area to, well, stretch. It felt better after the stretching and it didn’t bother me the rest of the evening during my core and upper body workout.

I’m still not feeling very confident about my return to running since the achilles has bothered me almost every run, but I’ll keep plodding on and see how things go. Let’s hope for the best. My choices at this point are stop running again and forget about my Spring races (including my first marathon), or train despite the achilles discomfort and keep my fingers crossed that the tightness slowly improves. The achilles problems I had last summer DID get better with time, stretching and a cutback on speedwork and hillwork, so hopefully the same will be true this time.

I tried a new cross-training activity today – I swam!!! I didn’t swim for long, but it sure felt good. I could feel the heart a’pumping! Now to get some goggles… and a bottle of Visine.