Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Learning to love the treadmill.

Yesterday, I tried a little interval-like experiment on the treadmill. I have rules this winter for treadmill running, the most important of which is that I will run no fewer than three miles at a time, but will not force myself to go beyond five. Yesterday, I felt good, so I did four.

I wish I could program in what I want to do, but maybe having to pay attention and change the speed every few minutes made it feel less mindless. Anyway, I set the elevation to 1% to mimic the effort of running against the wind. I walked for a few minutes (4 mph/15:00-ish minute mile pace), then alternated one minute at 8 mph/7:30 pace with three minutes at 6 mph/9:52 until I got to four miles, then walked to cool down. It was a good workout, and I think I will do it again (probably this afternoon), but increase the difference between the speeds (recovery pace a little slower and interval pace a little faster).

I think tomorrow night I will run with the store's running club again, now that I have some decent cold weather gear (and the snow should melt today!). Running that 5K netted me some Fiber One cereal and a series of Dick's coupons, so I snagged another compression mock-turtleneck (this time in a smaller, actually compressing size). Am also thinking of trail runners to keep me more sure-footed in the snow, but budgetary restraints what they are...

I still think we should try something blogidarity-/accountability-wise. Any takers? And I think I want to air some resolution thoughts for 2009: run the Cleveland Half-Marathon in May in under two hours, try a full marathon in the fall? You can see why I might need some accountability.

6 comments:

Kristina Buenafe said...

Awesome! On treadmills I usually start at 6.3 mph and work my way up to 7.5 mph with small intervals or goals (like once I get to 100 calories I switch by a bigger increment). I might try your interval scheme tonight.

run.happy said...

Hi, what are you thinking around blogidarity/accountability? I'm game! I could commit to about 10 miles a week.

Kristina Buenafe said...

I'm going to commit to 7 days/week of some sort of activity (outdoor running, treadmill running, yoga, lifting, track workouts, etc) and push my mileage to 35 miles. I'm going the opposite of run.happy and turning into run.vicious.

Wendy Cyphers said...

Excellent! I'm going to run 30 miles a week (over 5-6 days). I will try yoga and some light lifting here and there, and I did Zumba tonight with friends.

That makes 75 miles from the three of us. What if, as a group, we can commit to running our mileage (I bet the others are good for another 75 at least) and confessing here?

If we make it, we should have some sort of reward (I would treat myself to BreathThermo socks from Mizuno, e.g.).

James Tsai said...

i'm not sure how much I can commit... but I can try.

run.happy said...

ooh run.vicious, i like it. omg i guess this means i have to start running more than just the weekends. just what i needed!