Yeah. Major smoke. It was warm enough to run outside today but the paths near our house had over a foot of snow still on them as of yesterday. So I decided to do my 18 miler today on the treadmill.
Took it easy and did a steady 7.2 mph for the first hour and a half. After that I reset the treadmill as it due to the way the timer works on it I lose the seconds display after 99 minutes. So I reset the counters to zero with a restart of the treadmill. A bit of a silly thing but I like to see the seconds – especially if I am doing alternating fast/slow periods.
Got running again after the reset and started in on doing fast / slow cycles and after about 15 minutes I started smelling bacon. I figured the wife was taunting me by making breakfast but I still had about 45 minutes to go at that point so I ignored it and kept going. After a while the smell started getting stronger – started wondering if she had burnt the bacon at this point.
After a half hour after the reset I stopped to do a walk minute, looked down at my feet and saw a big cloud of smoke pouring out of the motor compartment. Ahhh crap! Quickly pulled the cord from the wall and grabbed a screwdriver to pull the cowling off the motor compartment to make sure there wasn’t an actual fire and noticed that 2 large capacitors on the control board inside the compartment had ballooned out and had melted plastic on them. That board is toast.
I have worked with electronics and IT for years (even professionally in the electrical industry) and have never known a piece of burnt electronics to smell like bacon. It is a very distinctive smell that usually comes off of burnt electronics that anyone has ever experienced will generally recognize pretty quick. I know if I had I would have stopped running before I got the cloud. Very strange.
Now this board that cooked was replaced back in December as part of a warranty claim so 3 months is not a good track record here. I have sent away to the manufacturer to see what can be done – I think the machine is now off warranty (for labor at least but maybe not for parts) so I’m not sure what can be done. But we will try to get it fixed.
I ended at 14.95 miles out of 18 scheduled when it fried and I managed to get in the missed 3.05 on a different machine tonight. So I did get my full 18 in today at a total of 2:27:03.
The real kicker? When I went out to get groceries this afternoon I noticed the paths in my neighborhood had finally been cleaned…so I probably didn’t need to do the long run on the treadmill and break it….dammit!
Hopefully we get this sorted soon!
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