Not So Best of Small Town Mexico-My Treadmill

I like to stay in shape. I am not a fanatic or anything, but I like to work out. My exercise of choice is running. I vacillate anywhere between a recreational and an avid runner. Right now I am very, very recreational. I credit my mom for instilling in me my "love" of running. She is going to turn 58 this year and is a marathoner. It is hard to be a couch potato when your mom is off training for a marathon.

Anyway, back to my "Not So Best of Small Town Mexico". I prefer to run outside; I like to have the variety of scenery that doesn't come running inside a gym. Unfortunately, my running options are seriously limited here. Running outside is not really an option because:

1. Too many dogs
2. Too many bad smells
3. Way too hot
4. Too many holes/cracks in the sidewalk
5. Too many men with too much time on their hands and too many comments (an exercising woman, or man for that matter, is not a common sight here)

Instead I run on my treadmill. Here it is:

We went all out and spent the big bucks on this baby last year. We spent an extra $1000 or so to get the heart monitor thingy. I think I have monitored my heart maybe 5 times.

Here is a list of just a few of the things that that I will do in order to avoid getting on the beast:

1. pluck my eyebrows
2. clean out my nightstand
3. start the laundry
4. organize my closet
5. organize my kids' closets
6. alphabetize my books/dvds/cds
7. dust my room
8. wash dishes

You get the idea. Once I finally get my ipod and hop on the machine here is an example of my thought process:

Ok, don't look at the time. That's right. We're doing fine. What? 2 minutes and 14 seconds???? That's it? It's ok, it's always the hardest at the beginning. Ok, I won't look again until the chorus of this song. 3 minutes. Ok, I will not look this entire song. Ok, 6 minutes. 1/5 of the way done. Now we're getting somewhere. Let's see, I'll count to 100 and then look. Whoops, I peeked. Is the phone/doorbell ringing? Ok, I will try not to look for 0.5 miles. Only 0.3?? Crap. Ok. Picture Forrest Gump, he ran accross the country, you can run for a half hour. 10 minutes. I am 1/3 of the way done...

And on and on and on. I go through this process 3 or 4 times a week. I drive myself nuts on that thing.

On the positive side, I can stick the two older kids on it when they're crawling the walls. Margarita (8 yrs) once ran 3 miles. And Juan Carlos loves to use it as a jungle gym:

Got to go. The beast calls.