leifw

We decided to buy a treadmill. Elizabeth had had a gym membership and she was primarily walking on a treadmill there, so we decided that we should cancel her membership and invest in a treadmill because it should pay for itself in less than two years and because she'd be more likely to use it at home. So began the shopping odyssey.

I scourred the classifieds for better than a month. When a good deal showed up, it was snapped up before I called in the evening following the ad's appearance. We went to used sporting goods stores where we were offered new treadmills. We went to Sears and checked out their wares. Some of their higher end stuff wasn't too bad and there was a sale just before New Year's that I intended to, but failed to, take advantage of.

Then we saw what Costco was carrying (google cache), a more or less unnamed treadmill from Epic. It really didn't look that much better than what Sears had and it was more expensive by a couple hundred dollars. We couldn't try it out in store like at Sears because, well, because it was at Costco. I was a little skeptical because Consumer Reports hadn't reviewed any equipement from Epic. But when we hadn't found equipement we liked after over a month of looking, we were getting desperate. Then we noticed that the Costco treadmill had dropped by $100 to $800 and we jumped on it, even though it was more expensive, based primarily on our experience that stuff we get a Costco is a good deal.

Getting it home was tough. It's heavy at 338 pounds. In general that surprised and pleased us because it seems reasonable to associate thick metal with quality in exercise equipment. Once we got it set up, which excluding lugging, was about a 60 minute task, it was really pleasant. It's got a really nice display with lots of pretty, flashy stuff to distract you from the joy of running. Elizabeth watched me run on it and concluded that it was much more solid than Sears' rubbish; it gave, but didn't try to fold up around me. The closest comparision in terms of features that I can find is the Epic MX 1000 offered by Home Depot for 2 kilobucks. I believe that that model's only advantage is that it has fancy metal wheels instead of the plastic wheels that ours came with. For $1,200 less, I'm really pleased. I'm even more pleased that after we've both used it twice in two days, we really like it and seem to, so far, be forming good habits around using it.

Three cheers for Costco!