Dangerous workout

Power cuts are something you live with in Nairobi, as in much of the developing world. People in Uganda and even South Africa deal with it just as often as we do, and in Liberia they don't even have electricity. So I try not to complain too much when the power goes out. I don't have a generator, but in most cuts usually it takes less than 10 minutes for electricity to be restored (although I can remember one case last year when it went out at 6 p.m. and by 9 p.m. was still out, so a bunch of people in my neighborhood went out drinking because, hey, bars have generators).

Naturally, however, there are less opportune times than others for the power to go out. It's bad when you're in the shower and suddenly you find the water heater's stopped heating. It's annoying when you've got Sunday morning eggs on the stove, and suddenly they stop scrambling. Then there are all those times when I've been pumping away at work, and then the Internet is gone.

But today was nearly the worst. I was running on the treadmill at the gym when the entire shopping complex lost power. Rather than merely slowing down as a treadmill does when you hit the "Stop" button, the belt went from a good 11 km/hr pace to zero in a split-second. Porsches don't brake this well. I ran right into the console and was stabbed in the gut. And these were brand-new machines.

Don't they have a mechanism to keep them from stopping on a dime like that? I figure even when you yank that red emergency cord, it just takes you down to a trot. It's probably not something that the manufacturer - whose address was listed as Orlando, Fla. - normally has to think about. But it'll be a few days before I'm able to get back on one of those things.