Treadmill Dancing: It ain't pretty — but it is what it is

joeheads will know that I produce bookofjoe from atop my Smooth Fitness Model 5.15 (discontinued recently in favor of the new and improved 5.25) treadmill cranking out the RPMs at a steady 0.7 mph.

I now spend most waking moments and hours atop my moving walkway and I have come to realize several things about what I will call, for want of a better term, the "treadmill lifestyle™."

1) Working and watching TV and listening to superloud music on a nearby boombox is addictive. When I go upstairs to my iMac where I formerly spent most of my waking hours, sit down in my chair and do computer stuff, I feel out of sorts and not at all happy. Mildly restless, in fact, and unwilling to stay there very long before going back downstairs and hopping aboard the clueless train™.

2) When the Stones or Prince really start cranking (I'm talking volume set at Max — 10 on a scale of 10, so loud I can never hear the mailman, the UPS guy or the FedEx guy pounding on my front door about 30 feet away [it's a good thing I live in a Podunk town so they leave everything on my front step without a signature]) — I can't help myself: I start dancing — yes, right on my treadmill!

3) Like I said in the headline above — it ain't pretty but when

joeTV goes live the camera's gonna be aimed at the treadmill — you'll be wanting to bag the video so as not to get sick should you decide to partake of the great tunes.

4) Walking backwards while slow sites load and all is an excellent way to avoid quadriceps overdominance. I try to spend at least a minute every hour facing the rear. (Your comments at this point, while unnecessary, are funny as heck, I must admit...)

5) Without any question my overall sense of well–being and enthusiasm has reached an all–time high with my adoption of the treadmill lifestyle.

Hey, Oprah's cool but me — I'm backing Jim Levine in 2008.