One fat geek's SUCCESSFUL attempt to regenerate into a not-so-fat geek by watching the entirety of Doctor Who while walking on a treadmill

The Treadmill is Dead, Long Live the Treadmill

Sep 28 2019
The Treadmill is Dead, Long Live the Treadmill

It's been a bit of a week. I was in such a groove, locked into finishing up Sapphire & Steel and then starting a new second lap on the Time Treadmill. Everything was awesome. Then last Sunday morning I got on the treadmill, and five minutes in the household circuit blew. When I reset the breaker, my trusty Lifespan treadmill would not power up at all. I had hoped it was just the fuse on the motor circuit board, but after replacing it I discovered that powering up the treadmill just blew the household circuit again. After a phone call with the manufacturer, the diagnoses was a bad main logic board. Ordinarily that would be a $500 part to replace (ouch!), but that wasn't even an option. They had no more of that board in stock, and no future resupply. The average lifespan of a treadmill that gets daily use is about five years, and this one had more than six years on it. After more than five million steps, the Time Treadmill was dead.

Keep reading below to fold to find out how my week only got worse from there.

So the treadmill went all DOA on Sunday, but it took until Wednesday to get the replacement fuse and discover that it was well and truly dead. The other thing that happened on Tuesday? My autistic son wound up back in the hospital with GI problems. I will spare you the scatological details, and just say that it involved biological matter from multiple orifices. It was... unpleasant. The good news is, after one night in the hospital and some very helpful interventions, he was able to return home on Thursday evening and is recovering well. Needless to say, I wasn't particularly concerned about treadmills for those couple of days.

On Friday I picked up a new-to-me used treadmill from someone locally who was just trying to clean out their garage. It's not great, but it works. I have no doubt that I will wear it out quickly. My long-term plan is to buy a brand new treadmill sometime in the next few months. I am doing my research now, knowing how much I use it and at what speeds. I want something with a much stronger motor, that will hold up to my daily use and which will last several years with proper care and maintenance. I have zeroed in on two particular models that I like, and at this point I am waiting for a sale.

In the meantime, I have a functioning okay-ish treadmill that I took through its paces this morning. I deliberately didn't push hard, I just went at a nice steady walking pace for the full hour. Having not worked out in a week, I wanted to be kind to myself. I also wanted to get a sense for how well this new treadmill would hold up. It seemed... ok? It felt a couple of times like the motor was bogging down a bit, and that worries me. I cleaned and lubricated everything before I started, so it is as good as I can make it. Tomorrow I will take it up a notch, and again the next day. Assuming everything keeps working properly, then on Tuesday or Wednesday I will start interval training again with some actual running speed mixed in. We'll see how it goes.

I was extremely worried about my weigh-in this morning, fully expecting to have ballooned in size in the past six days. I was delighted to discover that I was in fact within a tenth of a pound of my previous weigh-in. So, I lost a week of progress but at least I didn't backslide horribly. So that was nice.

As for my viewing, I watched the middle third of my current Sapphire & Steel story.

Sapphire & Steel: Assignment 3 a.k.a. The Creature's Revenge, Episodes 3 & 4

With Sapphire having disappeared, apparently transported into the invisible time-traveling capsule, Steel is at a loss as to how to proceed until the cheerful and mercurial Silver arrives. It turns out that there are actually three capsules, and Silver has the technical skills to transport himself and Steel into one of them, as well as bringing Sapphire along. Meanwhile, the naked-hairy-butt-man-baby thankfully puts on some clothes. It turns out that all of the people in the other two capsules are dead, and it appeared that naked-hairy-butt-man-baby also killed his parents. The cliffhanger where I left off also has Silver apparently vaporized as well by NHBMB. So... oops.

I am certainly enjoying this one, but it is also not quite the same level of creepy as the previous story in the railway station. I am also not entirely clear what is actually going on, but I think that is mostly be design. We will find out tomorrow whether it all makes sense in the end. I certainly like David Collings in the role of Silver. He appeared in several Doctor Who stories (most notably as the title character in Mawdryn Undead), and I also saw him very recently in the final episode of Blake's 7. Here he makes for a good cheerful counterpoint to Steel's icy demeanor. I like him a lot, and I am happy to see the character returns again in Assignment 6.

STATS:

Episode(s): Sapphire & Steel: Assignment 3 a.k.a. The Creature's Revenge, Episodes 3 & 4
Steps Walked: 6,414 today, 5,095,324 total
Distance Walked: 2.74 miles today, 2,624.61 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 0 today, 12,458 total
Sit-ups Completed: 0 today, 7,865 total
Weight: 276.16 lbs (five day moving average), net change -31.90 lbs


Total: 0 Comment(s)

Progress

Currently Watching:

( Story )


 of episodes viewed
%
 
 
 

of stories viewed
%
 
 
 

Total Steps Taken:

Total Distance Walked:
miles

Weight Progress:
 
Blue Line: 5-Day Moving Avg
Yellow Line: Daily Weight

Archives

Latest Posts

My Final Sweaty Thoughts about Doctor Who
6/7/2021 2:18 PM
Sweaty Thoughts about Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?
5/26/2021 4:47 PM
Sweaty Thoughts about Warriors of Kudlak
5/25/2021 6:12 PM
Sweaty Thoughts about Eye of the Gorgon
5/24/2021 6:10 PM
Sweaty Thoughts about Revenge of the Slitheen
5/21/2021 5:14 PM
Sweaty Thoughts about The Last of the Time Lords
5/20/2021 4:46 PM
Sweaty Thoughts about The Sound of Drums
5/19/2021 6:27 PM
Sweaty Thoughts about Utopia
5/18/2021 5:00 PM
Sweaty Thoughts about Blink
5/17/2021 6:55 PM
Sweaty Thoughts about The Family of Blood
5/16/2021 5:00 PM

Recent Comments