Her indoors

While the weather's as unseasonably gorgeous as this, who wouldn't want to be outside?

20.10.2014
Day 189

Recovery day, so a quick leg stretcher and plantar tester in the park. Difficult to stay at desk when the sun is so shiny.

There's a hurricane coming in from Mexico, so they say. The weather outside will be frightful by nightfall. Rain will be intense and continuous from dinner time until around lunch-time tomorrow. To heap on the misery, the mercury will drop to a more seasonal, distinctly chillier, temperature. The point of this impromptu forecast? That longer, wetter, colder nights and shorter, wetter, colder days will inevitably make getting out there to run more of a challenge.
Fairweather runners mark the clocks going forward with a determined sprint gymward. They complete their winter training on the treadmill and wait until balmier conditions to step outdoors again. Yet even the most faithful of treadmillers cannot gainsay the tedium of that infernal machine. Pounding the belt and going nowhere, with nothing to look at accept the LCD, adjusting the gradient to ring the changes and perhaps the odd swivel of the head to see how your neighbour's doing and wondering whether your stomach will ever look as flat as hers.
For these reluctant hamsters help is at hand, in the form of The Zone Dome. 
It's a treadmill, yes. It's in a gym, absolutely. But it takes you to places you'd like to see. It's Kevin Hewitt's idea. He calls it 'business class' treadmill running. The Zone Dome, which can be integrated with modern gym treadmills, plays HD films of beautiful countryside surrounding you as you get some serious mileage under your belt. So your five-mile run can take you through a whole landscape of your choice: mountain passes with snow-capped peaks on the horizon, grassland and savannah (is that the scent of wildebeest dung on the warm African wind?), tropical rainforest with exotic humming birds flitting to and fro. It certainly beats having Eastenders blasting its misery at you as you sweat through your 30-minute workout. 
I tried Zone Dome the other week, as a guest at the rather splendid Chelsea Health Club & Spa. 
I'm no fan of the treadmill, but having something beautiful to focus on helped me forget about the fact that I was running myself into a lather and going absolutely nowhere.
I can fully appreciate that gym bunnies will enjoy running business class. Me, I'll stick to the economy of my local park in the pouring rain. It's the cross country season, and nothing can beat a Saturday afternoon in my club vest and pants in some unknown part of Surrey, slaloming down a real, not virtual, 'brown run' (that's a very muddy hill) and landing on my arse in a puddle. There's no fool like an old-school fool.