Two miles on a treadmill??? Is that IT?

Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic.

But that's all I've been able to manage for the last 4 days.

Reason/excuse: I spent three days in a classroom in Salt Lake City, where I've been on a training course for a new meridian stress assessment device that I'm testing out as part of my day job. (www.biomeridian.com for those interested in complementary and alternative medicine.)

Sitting down for hours at a time does strange things to my body. As does air travel. And staying in a hotel. And eating out all the time and at odd times. Heard enough excuses yet?

Oh, why couldn't I go for a run while in Salt Lake? Um.. yes...with my sense of direction I couldn't risk it, besides which I had picked a hotel that I thought was well away from the freeway and turned out to be right on top of it.

The treadmill experience was NOT fun. It was a much battered and abused machine whose first message to me was "Please change my drive belt". I knew just how it felt. I picked the "10k lakeside run", which rolled out as a flat loop round a boring "track" on the display. The exercise "facility" itself was the size of a janitor's cupboard and was afflicted with what seemed to be 24-7 re-runs of "Deal or No Deal".

I set off for 10k, then felt so rough that I decided to quite at 5k... but it then got SO boring and painful, I had to stop.

On Saturday, my thoughts were with Marci who was doing a lovely long easy 22-miler out near the Boulder Res.

My classroom training was inspirational and fun, but my legs are screaming for a good romp.