Although I don’t like running on them, I’ve had a couple of entertaining incidents involving treadmills. The first was way back in 1983, when against my better judgment I went along with an idea to enter an event called the British Powerjog championships being advertised in Athletics Weekly. Our completely ill-prepared 3 man team travelled to London to compete in the heats of the competition. The event was held in a well appointed sports club in London’s west end and comprised of four treadmills set up side by side, each with a large digital display above and in front of them showing pace and distance covered. Each of the four 3 man teams set off at the gun and had to cover 3 miles as quickly as possible, with team members covering a distance before “handing over” relay style to the next member to carry on. The fact that two of us weren’t track runners, and that the third had never raced any distance greater than 400 metres, should have told us that we were not suitably qualified for the task in hand. Feelings of unease turned to terror when the first person we saw warming up as we walked into the venue was John Gladwin, an International miler who competed regularly as a member of the British athletics team. Despite being totally out of our depth, it was too late to back out so we put on a brave face and started warming up for the race. As for the actual event, I don’t remember too much about it, although we kept up a very respectable pace and were by no means being disgraced when, as I found myself relentlessly increasing my pace over the last 400 metres, briefly hitting 4 minute mile pace as I raced to the finish, watching the display ahead of me counting down the last 300, 200, 100, 50, 20 metres. Absolutely flat out at the moment of crossing the “finish line” I made the kind of mistake you only make once on a treadmill – I stopped running ! Sadly for me of course, the belt kept spinning round at a frantic speed. The result being that my feet were shot from under me, I hit the deck of the treadmill and was thrown off the back at a fair rate of knots. It must have been hilarious to witness. Unfortunately, I was too busy being battered, bruised and concussed to immediately see the funny side of the incident. I did though quickly recognise how stupid I was to have made such a mistake and limped away as quickly as possible ! Unexpectedly, this event lead to an invitation to another treadmill event which also had it’s funny moments. – More next time !
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