Forced Treadmilling

With a cold hard rain forecasted this morning I decided to sleep in and take my chances with an evening track workout. Unfortunately is was still cold (34) and still raining when I got home from work. I can't think of anything worse than running in heavy rain when the temps are near freezing so I instead pulled out the old treadmill.

My parents originally bought this treadmill sometime around 1997. When I first dabbled in running I took this treadmill for a spin in my parents basement. I moved out and left the treadmill behind. My friend eventually bought the treadmill from my folks and moved it into his apt. A couple years later that friend moved in with me and brought his treadmill, which I used a few times in a couple years. He moved out, left the treadmill and I brought it with me when I moved here. So, now it is mine.

I rearranged the basement to get the thing out, dusted the screen off, setup a cooling fan and got to work. I decided on a treadmill workout that I read about in Running Times. 90 secs at marathon pace at a 6% incline, 60 sec recovery jog, 60 sec at marathon pace at 7% incline, 2 minute recovery jog. Repeat 6-10 times. I chose 10 repeats.

After warming up for 20 minutes I started the workout with the intervals at 6:35 pace. After the fifth interval I increased the speed by 0.1 mph for each subsequent interval. On the 10th interval I maxed it out at 10mph. Overall the workout was a little easier than I expected but the last interval really made me work. I finished things off with a 10 minute cooldown. 12 miles in 1:26.

I never would have guessed that I could put in 12 miles on the treadmill but here I am writing about. I think a 12 mile easy run would have been torture but I spent so much time clicking my watch and changing the speed and incline that it wasn't totally horrible.