Treadmills and such...

I've been training to run the Mini Marathon this year (again for some reason) and I've spent a lot of time on treadmills. I hate treadmills with a passion. Nothing is more frustrating than running for 30-45 minutes and going NOWHERE.

While running on these contraptions I often start to wonder how they came to be. Who invented the first treadmill. Was it some sort of ancient torture device that people caught stealing bread had to endure? What exactly was the first treadmill designed to do? I have a sneaky suspicion that it wasn't for training...but I may be wrong.

Also while running on these things I find myself wondering "What will these machines look like to someone 100 years from now?" I was visiting the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina last summer and they had the old gym area set up there. The machines looked very strange to me. I just wonder if treadmills will look that strange to the future's people. If people will think, as I did, "How in the world do you go about using that!"

Today I have to run for 45 minutes. As I sit here in my heated office and peer out the window, I think it looks sunny. It's probably freezing out, but it's bound to be better than running on the torture machine....right?