Treadmill Explosion:

I didn't get around to posting about this until now, but my previously trusty Weslo treadmill of 1980's vintage blew up on me about three weeks before the Brenda Deer Memorial 5K run, which meant I didn't get much training in leading up to race day, so it was a miracle I even finished under the top 22% of racers, PR'ed, and tied my best training pace.

With all the rain we've had, I didn't want to run/train outdoors leading up to race day.

Weslo's are known for being one of the cheapest treadmills on the market, in fact one review I read on them said "Don't even think of any serious running, or even jogging on these, they will blow up in no time!"

The article led you to believe they were built for the occasional walker at best.

Mine had two motors, a small one for the incline function, and one for the main belt propulsion. Well, the incline motor blew up about one day after the 90 day warranty was up, ( back in the 80's ) stuck on about a 9% incline position, but I was able to train that way ( uphill ) regardless using the main DC motor, which was actually quite stout, ( 2.5 Horsepower ) for about 20 years, on and off.

The main running belt finally broke, ( although the motor was still going strong ) so I decided to find a good used treadmill and have my old one taken to the dump.

An interesting side note is that I had just a day or two before this happened had read an article about D.C. treadmill motors being good for the purpose of creating a homemade wind generator, and so was seriously considering recycling my motor for this purpose, but ultimately abandoned the idea since I had little practical purpose for this.

I hate my new ( previously owned ) treadmill, although it has more bells and whistles than the Weslo. It just will take a long time to get used to, so I feel I've been set back. ( It walks all over the floor, and flexes like a trampoline. )

I'm still trying to put boards and weights around it, to hold it in place, it has a few broken parts that are causing these problems, I really should have checked it out better before buying it.

But then some optimism set in. I now feel that by running faster, on lower inclines, I may be able to improve more quickly for real-world racing. Granted I will still do occasional hill workouts with the newer unit.

With the old treadmill, I felt strong cardiovascularly, but my legs didn't want to go fast outside being they were trained for uphills, where my pace was much slower, so I didn't do too well racing on flat surfaces because my legs just didn't want to run the faster pace required.

Hopefully that will change now.