trading asphalt for rubber

I've been wondering how I am going to run this winter.

What with the tricky lungs I've got, the treacherous ice and the pesky darkness we can't seem to escape, it seemed I was going to have to dig deep and run with ice gripers, ski mask and headlamp like last January.

Or trade in and go to the gym.

Sigh.

I don't really like the gym. And I like the treadmill even less. I like to move my body OUTSIDE, oxygenate my lungs with whatever ozone-free air I can find and have new scenery every quarter mile or so.

But something funny happened this week. I got on the Carver's treadmill, purely out of need, and found that I could do tempo workouts (my new found ass-kicker to try to improve my speed) on the treadmill (pre-programmed even!) and have little digital numbers tell my of my profound speed. It pretty well beat the pants off the sprint-to-the-next-telephone-poll strategy I had been utilizing.

And then Sandi told me about the Kids Klub.

Do other people know about this? Apparently yes because it was crawling with kids.

Listen to this: I can go to the gym to run WHILE SANDI IS AT WORK and SOMEONE ELSE WATCHES MY KIDS! For $4 for an hour or $6 for two!!!!

Okay, this is all great incentive and all but it is still the gym and I still will be a hamster on a wheel. To help matters not at all, a guy gave me the slow once over when I stepped foot in the door (flanked in children, no less) and then when I went to sign up (Sandi had it all pre-arranged and it was to be oh, so easy) the woman behind the desk said this: "Well, you and she aren't really together, you know what I mean?" even after I had told her Sandi was my partner. This just made me want to jump off the second level into the racquetball court below such is my continued sadness over the loss of marriage rights.

But then I dropped the very excited girls with a slightly sketchy looking teenager and hit the treadmill. It helped that I knew I was right there if they needed me. It helped that I suddenly became truly eager to pump some iron and stay for 2 hours next time. It helped immensely that I was running, albeit on a treadmill, without my children during a time I would normally be trying to contain their craziness at home.

It helped the most that I ran intervals under an 8 minute mile. And I ran faster than the guy next to me.