It was dark outside, the roads were covered with two inches of new snow and the "feels like" temperature was 6 degrees.
Time to go to the gym and get back on the treadmill.
Ugh.
Two and a half weeks ago, I did my weekly long run on the treadmill. My feet hurt for three days, and I hadn't been back.
The good thing is that I like interval workouts, even on the treadmill. In fact, on the treadmill I prefer them.
The night before, I consulted my training paces from this calculator and my treadmill conversions from this chart, did the figuring two different ways, and kept getting the same answer: that I should set the speed at 8.3 mph for the speed intervals! Yikes!!!!! No way!!!!! My best race pace so far has only been just a tiny bit faster than 6 mph, and the fastest I'd ever set the treadmill before was 7.5 mph and only for one or two intervals. I decided to try 8 mph - fully expecting to be hitting the down arrow very quickly!
Before going to bed, I set up the program on my interval timer app:
Got up at 5:00; was a little slow so it was almost 6:00 by the time I got to the gym. I was wondering if I had made a mistake in my training plan, since I had done a long run two days earlier and most other weeks call for an easy recovery run after the long run. Well, easy enough to shift gears if it was too hard.
First, the warm-up. In addition to my 15K-training, I'm also doing the Beach Body challenge from the 30-day Fitness Challenge app.
Yesterday was Day 23, which called for 50 reverse lunges and 100 skaters. Seemed like a good way to wake up my legs!
Then one more stop before the "dread-mill": a quick visit to my absolute favorite piece of equipment in the whole gym:
The stretching cage! I love this thing! You get to hold on while you stretch. There is a chart that tells you what stretches to do for which activities, and pictures of each stretch. Here are the pictures of two of my favorite stretches:
If it didn't cost $2400 I'd have one in my cellar!
I saved the two stretches shown above for after my run; before it I just did some quick and simple quad, hamstring and calf stretches.
OK, couldn't put it off any longer.
First, 5 minutes of walking, increasing the speed each minute.
Then, time to set the speed intervals.
Push the "Speed Interval" button; first it says "Enter Jog Speed." 5.3 mph.
Then it says "Enter Run Speed."
I really did enter 8.0 mph!
After 5 minutes at jog speed, the app bell rang and I hit the "speed interval" button to toggle to run speed for 30 seconds . . . then back to jog speed for a minute . . . and I did that 12 times!!! And I never hit the down arrow!!! I did hold on for interval 4; not sure why, just found myself doing it but it's bad form so I kept myself from doing it again. Except for every time I toggled down to jog speed, because it felt like something embarrassing might happen if I didn't!
Five more minutes of walking to cool down, and then back to the stretching cage to do the full suite of "running/walking" stretches. Then, wash my hands and home by 7:00.
A great and surprising workout! And, best of all, my feet don't hurt today like they did last time I used the treadmill.
Anyone else have a good treadmill workout to share?
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