More stuff...this time a treadmill!

So having written last week about the Garmin Footpod, I thought I should give you a round up about the machine that it is used on; a Bodyguard T240.

Before I write about the T240 I want to give you some back story on how we arrived at the decision it was the model we wanted. We had several main criteria: reputation, budget, warranty, size and noise

The treadmill was going to be located in our lounge, at the back end where there is a dining area, the room is about 35' long in total, my wife wanted the deck outside and I wanted the garage so we compromised; neither of our original choices were ideal; the deck would leave an expensive and sensitive piece of equipment exposed to the elements and the garage was not so great due the huge variable in temperature and the general dust and dirt that you find in a garage. The reputation within the industry had to be solid in terms of reliability, value for money and technical support. The warranty needed to be solid with parts and labor support for as long as possible. And finally we had a budget and wanted to have a solid treadmill with some features rather then one that had various unwanted or unused bells and whistles and was not robust enough.

As mentioned we decided in the end for a Bodyguard T240. This is the entry level home gym option from Bodyguard, a Canadian company, and has won several awards as a company and for that title and for the price range; it falls within $1500-2000. The warranty seems rock solid; lifetime on the frame and motor, ten years on parts and wear-and-tear and three years on labor. Another feature for us that the distributor we purchased from; F.B.I. is also an authorized service provider and they are located only 16 miles away.

I’ll not bore you with a lengthy description of all the features, you can find them on Bodyguard's website, but suffice to say it has a top speed of 10MPH and a max incline of 15%, there are nine preset programs and it is Polar HRM compatible.

Now for the nitty-gritty, the running board has a proprietary shock absorb system and works great so far; I am 170lbs or so and there is little or no feedback from it. I was a little worried by its width (20") as it is narrower than a gym machine but having run on it now several times the width and length (57") are more adequate for my stride etc; I am 6’1”. The band once bedded in is fairly quiet although it squeaks a little bit if you run at the back end. The motor is also quiet and is continuously on, as per most gym machines, it also comes with a built in surge protector is case of power outages or surges. The rails at the front are unobtrusive and are a solid loop so there are no sharp edges, they are nice and short so there is no risk of hitting them with your hands as you run and they are the right height; technically speaking not too high and not too low. There are two all important bottle holders. The dashboard at first appearance is simple and the “JustGo” feature allows you to do just that, the downside is that to get to some of the programs and other features you do need to spend some time looking at the manual as they are somewhat buried, although my expectation is that the “Manual” setting will be the most popular!

While it is early days both my wife and I are pleased with it, watch this space for an updated write up after 3 months or so. Finally thanks to everyone who I asked for providing their opinions, thoughts etc.