I've never really stuck with a gym membership for long. Not once. Four attempts, four times the same thing: enthusiastic for the first two weeks, then getting in the car started to feel like a chore, and after two months the pass ended up in a drawer somewhere.
I work from home, usually back behind my laptop by half past eight. Between the first email and the first call there's sometimes not five minutes of breathing room. Moving was something for "when I have time." That time never came.
A colleague had a treadmill under her desk and I honestly thought: what nonsense, that thing will be gathering dust within a month. Still, the idea stuck with me. No gym, no travel time, no weather to worry about. Just a thing in the room.
I've now had the RunningPad Pro for just over five months. Not that I've suddenly become a fitness fanatic, I don't run a single meter on it, I walk. During my first call of the day, sometimes while scrolling through my email. Easy pace, just walking, it wakes up my head in a way my coffee, at least, doesn't manage.
"I was afraid the thing would make noise during video calls. But now I'd bet that nobody on my team knows I'm walking while I talk to them."
What makes it work for me is mostly that it takes zero resistance to get started. The thing sits folded behind the couch, I set it down, step on, and within ten seconds I'm walking. No app that needs to start up first, no hunting for shoes, etc.
I won't pretend it always works out. There have been weeks, especially around a deadline in March, when the belt sat still for four days. I just started again the next day, without holding it against myself. I think that's the biggest difference from a membership you've already paid for and that comes with guilt attached: this doesn't feel like an obligation or a failure, it's simply a thing that's there again whenever I need it.
I notice it most in myself toward the end of the afternoon. I used to sit there with stiff shoulders and a tired head, now I've usually already moved two or three times for twenty minutes without it feeling like "exercise." No personal record, no Strava streaks. Just a body that feels less stiff by the end of the day.
If someone had told me a year ago that I'd now move every day thanks to a treadmill that folds up, I wouldn't have believed it. But here I am. Not a new version of myself, just the same Sanne who finally found something that fits how her day actually looks.
