The Dreaded Treadmill...

KL from above

I’ve just got back from a week-long trip to Malaysia, to attend one of my good friend’s wedding. The trip was amazing, and mostly spent relaxing, eating, drinking, and enjoying the warm weather. There was only one thing missing…exercise. Kuala Lumpur is an interesting city, like a slightly less rich version of Singapore or Hong Kong, with a lot of character and some really incredible buildings to visit. It is not, however, a city in which anyone walks very much. The lack of pavements, the high humidity and 31C weather, combined with taxis that cost less than the price of a tube ticket at home, meant we spent a lot of time driving places and not much time on our feet.

Which, if you’re like me, actually gets quite difficult to bear after a few days. I get restless, itchy to move properly, and it starts affecting my ability to sleep. So, after a night spent tossing and turning, and with nothing planned until lunchtime, I finally decided to bite the bullet and head to the gm.

Now, I am not a fan of gyms. I like getting my exercise outdoors, so I avoid gyms as much as possible. I also really, really don’t like treadmills, so when I did drag myself downstairs, my intention was to try and do some strength training. That plan fell by the wayside however, when it turned out the gym had only a few weight machines and they were mostly already in use. So treadmill it was.

The dreaded treadmill...

My main problem with treadmills is that, without the distractions of changing scenery, I tend to get overly focused on the numbers on the screen. And that makes the session feel much longer and more painful than an equivalent session on the road. It also frustrates me that I can’t alter my pace without jabbing at the buttons in front of me. And ultimately, I just find it incredibly boring. It’s the one time when having an iPod and some podcasts to listen to is actually pretty vital. Otherwise I’d never keep going.

In the end, I actually did a couple of fairly decent sessions. For all my distaste, I will concede that treadmills do have a slight advantage when it comes to interval-style sessions. If you can figure out the individual machine’s programming system (not always the easiest thing in the world), then you can push yourself to increase speed, or run up hills, and if you are willing to be a stickler, you can keep up a higher intensity of work out with a lot more ease than when your outside.

On my first visit, I did 30 minutes worth of 5min fast/5 min slow run with the fast sessions run at 6.54 minute miles – pretty good for me and a pace I’d struggle to stick to if I was running intervals outside. The second visit I just did a steady 40 minute run (there’d been a fair amount of alcohol the night before, so I wasn’t at my best). And on my third trip I tried a hill session, running at a steady pace with the machine’s pre-set varied inclines. I’m not sure how those compare to hills in the real world, but as I’m someone who does a very good job of avoiding doing hill session, it was probably a good place to start.

So I’ll admit, the treadmill does have some advantages, and  whilst I can’t see myself deciding it’s worth joining a gym for, and I certainly won’t be going out of my to use one (my parents have on in their basement which my dad uses on particularly rainy days…), if the opportunity presents itself, I know I can get a decent workout on one.