ON THE MILL AGAIN

I made the “mistake” of looking at the TV guide last night. I saw that NCAA basketball tourney was on TV tonight. That “forced” me to sleep in this morning and do my up-tempo run tonight on the treadmill, while watching the games. It was a toss-up for me. I really like to get my runs out of the way in the morning. However, I’ve been getting sick of winter lately and its dark cold mornings – especially Thursdays. Even though it’s been around 15-20 degrees lately in the mornings, which really isn’t that cold, I’m just ready for a break. Plus running tonight gave me an extra hour of sleep. Even though I was up feeding the dog at 4:45, I just went back to bed.

I don’t mind the treadmill, especially if I’m doing a harder effort. And I mind it even less if there’s something decent to watch while I’m running. Even though I was yawning all the way home from work and didn’t really want to get on the treadmill, I was able to pump out 11 miles without even thinking about it. I did a 2 mile warm-up, 7 miles that averaged out to “7:00 pace”, then a 2 mile cool-down. I used quotes around my pace because I don’t think my treadmill is very accurate. Either that or I’m in terrific shape because 7:00 pace felt VERY comfortable.

It probably is time to get the treadmill re-calibrated though. We’ve had it 5 or 6 years now without any maintenance – other than vacuuming out the dog hair and tightening the belt. I know it’s not accurate at certain speeds, I’m just not sure about all speeds. For example, if it’s going at 7.1 mph, I’ll be running 8:50 pace. However, if I bump it to 7.2 mph, I can hear the motor kick-in and the pace drops to 7:50. That kind of sucks because I like to do my easy runs somewhere in the middle. Running half at 8:50 and half at 7:50 gets me there, but it’s not the same.