Running: The Anti-Topoli

Five years ago in Seattle I was running five miles every night, rain or snow or shine - I was running and I was healthy, and I didn't have a body complex.
Three years ago I gave up running for fear of heat stroke and being attacked by the packs of wild dogs that roam India, and took up swimming in the Indian Ocean. When it became clear to me that this just wasn't enough for a body rounding the the way-other-side of 30, I had two beach-volleyball poles crafted at the local metalworks, found a lame plastic sports net in Pondicherry, borrowed a ball from Youth Camp and set up shop at Repos (Auroville's beach).
A year and a half ago I had no choice but to give up the whole effort entirely as exercise in landlocked-Bangalore means one of a few things: get an inordinate amount of attention running on the street and work my way around snarling dogs all over again, get an extremely uncomfortably inordinate amount of attention running in a gym, or swim in a public pool I wouldn't be so cruel as to wash one of said dogs in, much less immerse myself.
Long story short, my once-glorious health and tone has deteriorated to a laze of muscles that once knew what they were for but now do me no favors other than keeping my skin attached.

It's been at least three years since I've managed any regular kind of exercise - and at 32 it's about the time to subscribe to the use-it-or-lose-it philosophy.
Plus, I'm really addicted to the little cream puffs Hamid's sister insists on buying for me every week.

So - after weeks of lamenting just how on earth I'd manage a run outside in a country where I basically have to be over-dressed to leave the house and must don a scarf on top of everything else, we came up with a brilliant solution and brought home a running machine.

It's a gorgeous, modern, beeping contraption that tortures me and leaves me happily exhausted and muscle-sore, and it is my new best friend.