Can’t Believe I’m Going to Say This…

I’m getting ready to pull the trigger on a treadmill. I hate running on treadmills, it seems wicked tedious compared to the relaxed thrill of running on the open road. But I felt kind of guilty during winter training last year. Mrs. Progman is a teacher and I have a 6 & 8 year old. The entire winter they were waiting for the elusive snow day while I was silently praying for clear roads to run on. We didn’t really get any decent snow in NJ last year, so I got lucky on the training but my kids got jipped. I want to have a fallback for the inclement weather this year, not to mention it’s pretty convenient to have when you want to bang out 5 miles here and there.

I am leaning towards a used Precor or LifeFitness commercial machine. I am 6′ 2″ tall and tip the scale at about 185 so I need something that will take a beating. I’m pretty sure if I bought anything less than a gym quality machine I would ruin it in about a year if I was doing any kind of regular mileage on it. I’ve got a spot picked out in the ‘ol garage right next to the racquet stringer, just need to add the machine.

If anyone has any good advice on Treadmills I would love to hear it. I haven’t seen alot of mention of them in the running blog-o-sphere so I’m curious if anyone uses them or not.