My Punishment

A while back I made some summer exercise goals. I wanted to get through the couch to 5km program (C25K) and/or go biking around the neighbourhood on a regular basis. I did neither of these things and am now punishing myself for it - well it is more like not rewarding myself, but it feels like punishment. My goals for the two programs were a treadmill and a stationary bike, respectively. I am not getting either of these things and will need to get through the Fall and Winter exercise seasons without them. I will still of course have my existing equipment but I was hoping that new stuff would get me liking exercise or at least not wanting to waste my newly spent money. This is the first time I have not allowed myself to get something based purely on my lack of exercise and/or weight loss outcomes. It feels odd to be restricting my purchases this way.

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10 days

10 days have passed since I last posted here and I really have no news to speak of. I have lost a couple pounds, but nothing significant and with the stress being created by everything around me I haven't had time to exercise (I have been doing a fair bit of walking since it is tulip time in Ottawa and I love them so much). The big stresses are gone now so hopefully I will be able to get back on track with my exercise program. My jog/run program has yet to get off the ground and if I don't get it started soon there will be no treadmill for me come fall (as that was the reward to a successful summer program). I am working out tonight with Chris and hopefully we can figure out a schedule that will work for the two of us so we can get back into that routine as well.
I bought a bunch of sweets the other day because I could but by the time I got home, I no longer wanted them. I had a reasonable portion of some of the sweets yesterday and believe I will be able to keep doing so until they are gone.

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TreadClimber

Bowflex has come out with a new piece of exercise equipment - the TreadClimber. It is a combination of an elliptical machine, stepper and normal treadmill. It has two separate tracks which move up and down in a way that is supposed to decrease the strain on your joints that occurs when walking and running on normal treadmills. The motion is very similar to an elliptical machine which I know from experience has such smooth movements that your joints rarely feel the treadmill pain. When I was on a business trip I kept seeing commercials for this product and looked into it. There are three models ranging from $1500 to $2500 - all too expensive for me and I knew that would be the case when I started my investigation. I was really just interested in the product since it seems like a really neat idea.
The TreadClimber can be changed into a normal stepper or treadmill as well by either locking the tracks to each other in some fashion (treadmill) or stepping on them with the moving components turned off (stepper). I thought this was pretty neat until something was made clear to me. The way you walk is different from the way you run and therefore you couldn't use the TreadClimber in treadmill mode to run as you run in a straight line (one foot in front of the other) and not side by side like when one walks. Therefore if you wanted to run in the winter in your home, you would still need a regular treadmill - that is unless it turns out the conclusions made here are wrong. Either way, I can't afford one (nor do I need one as I have an elliptical machine) but they seem neat.

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