Outside today

Well despite the fact that I prefer to run on treadmill’s every once in a while it is significantly more convenient to run outside.

Today was the perfect day. I took a 3.12 mile run in 62 degree temperature. With the sun out, I enjoyed every minute of the fresh air. I ran the 3.12 in 26:30 for an 8:29 pace. It is just about at my average of 10 seconds longer per mile when I transition from treadmill to land.

The sun felt real good today. The tank was pretty much on empty when I finished, and besides the normal soreness from pounding the pavement, my legs and joints felt great. The University of Alabama is a lot of things, but on a spring day like today it is certainly beautiful. Everything is starting to bloom, and the air is clean.

You could hear the jets preparing for the airshow tomorrow in Northport (across the river), but you couldn’t see them yet. Yesterday, the blue angels buzzed the school. What a noise that is. If you haven’t seen them perform, it is worth your while to check them out if you ever have the chance. We get fly bys for all of our football games in the fall, but it is a bit out of the ordinary to get them on a spring day.

I’m stuck inside today working on paper’s for an upcoming conference so the fresh air was a welcome change, but I did do a little research on sun damage (with all the news of Vitamin D versus skin cancer as of late), and I was able to find a great recent post by the running doc. Wear your sunscreen. His blog has recently been added to my blog roll.

http://runningdoctor.runnersworld.com/2009/03/weighing-in-on.html

A different perspective on the treadmill.

A funny treadmill story for you all. Courtesy of Off the Wall.  Thanks, Bruce.

http://brucebyfield.wordpress.com/2008/03/05/the-terror-of-the-treadmill/#comment-4954

The Bleghs…

Today, when I hit the treadmill I had the bleghs. For whatever reason, I felt blegh. Nothing works when you feel like this. I was winded by 2 minutes. I was tired by 5 minutes and everything after 1 mile took a monumental effort on my part. This doesn’t happen to me too often, but when it does…

The only thing I know to do is keep going. I tell myself, “one more minute.” Then I tell myself that again. Eventually, I have to slow down. It feels blegh.

I refuse to ever leave the treadmill before I have reached my goal distance for that day. I’m not so concerned about pace, but I punish myself for having the bleghs. It must be mental with physical symptoms. Sometimes you feel miserable, and then once you finally bring yourself to run you hit that mile mark and it feels so good. The bleghs are the opposite of that. You feel perfectly normal, looking forward to running, then when you do it…no bueno. I punish myself for this. Finish, the total distance and doing it a significantly increased speed after walking some. You sweat, heave, huff and puff, but then you are done. The bleghs are gone. Tomorrow is another day. You will run it the way you were supposed to tomorrow.

Sweat

Is it exercise if you don’t sweat? As someone who works out in a major SEC school’s Rec Center, I have to ask this. Why show up if you are going to put in 14 minutes of walking on the treadmill at a crawl? I understand if you are obese, older or disabled, and you need to have any physical activity in your life to help improve the quality of that life. But, come on, 19 year old perfectly healthy people should be able to do a little more.

It wouldn’t be such a problem if they wouldn’t always seem to have the prime equipment in the prime spots when I am looking for a treadmill. It kills me. If you want to be seen, just go pace through the weight room. But then I counted, there were 3 guys on the cardio equipment at the time. All of us were almost old enough to have children in the University. Therefore, I’m going to say that I’m pretty sure being seen was not their motivation to be there.

So what is motivating them? I have to believe that it is a misguided notion of youth that they need to exercise, but don’t need to really exercise. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that their future battle with age and genetics will eventually catch up with them.

March 31, 2009

Activity	Time	Miles	Pace	Repetitions	Weight
Run	23:02	2.75	8:22
Walk	10:57	.67

Just a quick run on the treadmill today, but it felt nice. I even got cocky and started to think that I would be able to do it without laboring at all, but around 2.3 miles I felt the end of my lungs. My legs felt real good, and tomorrow we go 3 miles. Almost to 5k, then we can get working on the speed and pace. I had to get back to see a professor about a project we were working on, but it was good that I made it to the gym at all.

Good little workout today

Activity			Time	Miles	Pace	Repetitions		Weight
Run	18:57			2.25	8:25
Walk	9:03			.52
Distance Intervals				1/8		6
Shoulder Press						3×15	50
Incline Press						3×15	50

It was a real nice workout today. No pain in the diaphragm, didn’t start breathing heavy until about 1.4 miles. Felt real goooooood.

As usual, I started the treadmill at 6.9 for half a mile, 7.0 for half a mile, and 7.1 for half a mile. At mile 1.5, I upped the speed to 7.2 for a quarter of a mile. I ran the last half mile the same as usual where I kept upping the speed 1 for each tenth of a mile. Finished the run just before 19 minutes, this is a 26 minute pace for a 5k. I am working to get that down to 24 minutes. That is my first goal.

I ran distance intervals (see the post called “The Exception to the Treadmill” forthcoming very shortly). Half the lap, I ran as fast as I possibly can. The second half of the lap, I walk back to the start. I planned on doing a bench or chest press, but there was an idiot on the machine that I like to use for that. Rather than have to make eye contact or possibly exchange words while trading off the machine, I decided to hit the showers.

Treadmills

I run on treadmills. I work out at a nice gym at a large state university. We have lots of treadmills. I have never waited longer than 2 minutes for a treadmill, and I can count on my hand how many times I had to do that. Still, purists claim that I will lose pace come race day. Well, I won’t have a race if I don’t train at all.

I’m fat, I’m old, I just don’t like running outside. I don’t like running on tracks, I don’t like running on the street, I don’t like green eggs with my ham. I won’t run regularly enough if I do not train on treadmills. I am not ashamed. I do hear snickering when I tell people that I train on a treadmill. Oh well.

There are a number of reasons that I prefer the tread mill.

1. It is easy to keep track of my pace and distance.

2. It is more comfortable on my body over long periods of time.

3. I can watch tv while I run.

4. I am not alone when I run.

5. It gives me all kinds of numbers to constantly do math.

Let me try to explain these items. I like to do math while I run. I don’t know what other people do to keep themselves from going insane, but I do math. I was very surprised how emotionally challenging it was to run a half-marathon. The math helped me keep my focus and pulled me back in when my brain wanted to quit. While I am doing my math, I like the security of having other people around. I also race the person next to me. I don’t like to get off the treadmill before them or run slower than the people next to me. Last spring there was a girl that ran around the same time as me everyday, she kicked my ass. I couldn’t beat her. The tvs are nice for the times where I just can’t do any more math. It is the same function of the bands on the race course, or even the fans, a small distraction that is easy to leave behind. For one reason or another, my knees and hips prefer it if I train on a treadmill. No soreness means that I will run again soon. Finally, I love to make that machine go faster and watch the time numbers increase. It is gratifying. Instantly so.