<om woodway.com:
The CURVE manual treadmill burns up to 30% more calories than conventional treadmills because YOU are the power behind it!
[snip]
Research has proven users can reach the same cardiovascular levels walking on the CURVE as they can running on a normal treadmill.
It has been a pretty curvy week at Carleton. (Yeah, I said it.) First, the Math Department on Wednesday sponsored a talk on curvature and its new applications. (It turns out traffic patterns have curves.) And now, the Rec Center has installed a new curve-a-licious treadmill. This new treadmill is crazy.
We did some research and discovered that Woodway Curve is not your grandma’s treadmill. It’s a self-powered treadmill that burns calories, NOT electricity. Because of the curve, just running starts the treadmill and keeps it going. Sounds great, right? Being Green AND fit–so Carleton!
However, this treadmill poses two problems. First, it’s confusing to old people. Since my preferred treadmill is right next to the curvetastic one, I have witnessed no less than four non-student gym-goers freak out at the prospect of this new machine. Most people get on, stand there for a second looking for an ON button. They take a few tentative steps, and immediately exclaim something like “WoooOOOOooo!” or “Oh! My Goodness!” or some other old-person-phrase. This could be because old people never seem to understand new things (see: Andy Rooney’s twitter), but I suspect it goes deeper than that. So I tried it out. And that brings me to the new treadmills second problem: it confuses me. Because it bows up at each end, it cuts my stride short, and makes me trip, at which point I yell out a young-person phrase (“F*#%!”).
Granted, I only tried it for about a minute before returning to my old-school treadmill of yore, but still. Maybe I just need to practice? Unclear. I’ll probably give it another chance the next time I’m feeling extra coordinated. But until then, how are the old people and I supposed to get swoll? Carleton, what’s up with that?
