Recently the weather around here has been fairly poor on the whole, which means that I have been unable to do my usual run each day, but that’s OK I thought, I can always use the treadmill at the local gym, and exercise out of the summer rain in a nice air conditioned environment.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. Running on a treadmill is one of the worst experiences I have had in my life, and as soon as it stops raining and I recover from the various injuries I have picked up during my enforced indoor season, I’ll be back on the road. And next time it rains, I’ll wear a jacket!

The first problem with a treadmill is that the speed is so constant. Outside, I run around a 7 minute mile pace on a 5 mile run. That’s not super fast, but it means I get a good workout. Unbelievably the treadmills at the gym don’t go that fast.

The next problem with a treadmill is that they operate on a constant pace. You start at a speed, and you keep going at it. Its really unnatural. When you are running on a road, you pace yourself, leaving enough energy to speed up over the last mile and really getting your heart going. On a treadmill you cannot programme that in, you have to push a button to change speed, and that throws off your rhythm, and you strain your knees because you start landing awkwardly (as happened to me).

The constant speed also means that you have no margin for error. If you put a foot off the rolling road, you will damage your knees, and possibly fall over embarrassingly.

There is too much rebound from the surface that you run on, which gives you shin splints, and then when you finally get back on the road, you feel as though you are running through treacle.

The biggest problem with running indoors in a gym on a treadmill is that you miss out on the me time that running offers. Jean Paul Sartre wrote that hell is other people, and I’m willing to bet that if he were still alive today he’d steer well clear of a gym where instead of enjoying the peace and calm of a country track, you have to sweat in the middle of a row of ungainly panting people who just don’t get it.

Like I say, I can’t wait to escape the gym.