If I started a blog by telling you that I was thinking about buying a treadmill, you may well click away in anticipated boredom.
But the fact remains, I’m seriously considering buying a treadmill. There, I said it.
So what? Well, quite. Of course, I’m telling you this for a reason.
This April, at the ripe old age of 41 – pushing 42 – I’m running the London Marathon for the first time. The training itself is pretty gruelling, though not necessarily more than I’d bargained for. On Sunday, I went for a nice 10-mile run through the mildly rolling hills on the Herts/Essex border. Jolly nice it was too, because the sun was out. Yes, it was pretty nippy, hence the nice running gloves and the fleecy running hat; but apart from that, it was a beautiful day.
I confess that I’m really not looking forward to the torrential rain, the snow, the ice, the hail, the sleet; the having to don my trainers when it’s minus a billion degrees to start pounding the pavements after work in the dark. Because like it or not, I have to run five times a week. So for that reason, I’m in the market for a treadmill.
Only thing is, I’m not sure I really want one.
Logically, it makes a lot of sense. If both my wife and I join a gym at £30 a head, which is about standard, we’ll have spent more in one year between us on gym membership than the cost of a good second-hand treadmill on eBay. And that will last us way more than a year – two at the very least, I should think. Plus there’s the not having to actually get to the gym, the being able to run at 2am if I want (I won’t, of course, but I could), the lack of sweaty bodies around me in the changing room, the clean rather than minging shower, and the ability to watch a film of my choice while I run 20 miles.
So, lots of positives there. But I’d sort of miss going to the gym. Leaving aside the fact that they have other gym facilities that I’d use besides a treadmill, I get a strange sense of camaraderie while I’m there. Not with the buffed-up beefcakes who lift their T-shirts to check out their washboard abs in the mirror once they’ve done their crunches while clasping a massive dumbbell for extra resistance, of course; but with the other 80% who don’t really want to be there either but, like me, they really ought to be.
After all (like me) they’re sitting at a computer all day, and they don’t want to get middle-aged spread before they hit middle age, and they certainly don’t want to get DVT from being desk-bound either.
As a freelancer, I am well used to working from home. Don’t get me wrong, I love it. I love being able to do my first hour’s work while still in my pyjamas, with my first coffee close at hand just 10 minutes after I’ve got up. I also love having my own personal office with my own personal desk, sitting at my own personal exceptionally comfy chair, with all my own personal paraphernalia stacked in ordered (and “I sort of know what that pile is”) piles around me.
There’s no horrendous commute to work, so I don’t spend anything on that (which more than offsets the admittedly slightly horrendous utilities bills) and I’m good with my time management. So all in all, working from home is great. Wouldn’t change it for the world. “The world”, in this case, meaning “quite a lot more money”.
But somehow, although it makes perfect logical and financial sense, I am holding off on my great idea to buy a treadmill which will mean I don’t have to commute to the gym.
I’ve been all on my own for three days now. Granted, I’ve spoken to my wife on the phone each day (she’s abroad at the moment) but that’s been the extent of my human contact. For most of those three days, I’ve got up, worked, done a few chores, been for a run, eaten, washed, watched an episode of something or other to use up the pre-bed gap, and then gone to bed. That’s it.
So I suppose it’s as simple as this: I’m a people person; and I miss being with people. Might the treadmill be the making of Ashley The Hermit?
Ashley is a copywriter, editor and blogger
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