January 19th, 2011. So here I am back in Dayton, where winter is a bit more serious than back home and I don’t have ready access to everything. Packed along the basic running gear and also brought my Garmin Sports Watch because I was psyched to measure the distances I run here, even though I left the heart rate strap at home. Alas, it is a poor week to go running outside. There’s snow on the ground and my first running day, Tuesday, we had freezing rain.roads…
Since I am hampered by my painful rib cage at the moment, I almost punted on the program this week. Growing concern over how crappy my time will be for the marathon, however, humbled me to utilizing one of the treadmills here at the Holiday Inn Express. For some reason or another I can’t stand treadmills. Out on the road I always focus on reaching a physical location a half mile ahead and enjoy the sights and sounds as I make steady progress.
Believe I already shared that I rarely peek at my watch when I run and I rarely watch TV. Unfortunately the only things you can do on a treadmill are peer at all the readouts or look at the television set. As much as I enjoy running outside, I detest pacing on the hamster wheel…but any port in a storm.
So last night I went to the hotel gym wearing long pants because I had only packed for running outside in freezing weather. Jumped on one of the treadmills and since there were no instructions I hit the “Quick Start” button. Thought I could select the amount of time I wanted, but there wasn’t any button by the clock. There were two readouts which had up and down arrows beneath them, however. One had Distance at the top and Incline at the bottom; don’t remember exactly how the other one was labeled. So the first thing I did was click the distance up to 6.5 miles, but the treadmill continued to spin ever so slowly. So I started ticking up the second set of buttons and then we started moving.
After a couple minutes I was sweating bullets and my injured side was really starting to voice discomfort. Then I deduced I had actually set the Incline to 6.5 degrees and once I backed that off things got decidedly more pleasant. But with the pain in my side and the monotony of watching the clock creep along or gazing at the boob tube, it was not fun at all. After 28 minutes the machine automatically shut off (not that it stopped suddenly, there was a gradual slow down), which was also annoying. I cranked it up again but started to feel myself going low as I never run immediately after dinner and obviously wasn’t prepared. So after forty minutes I threw in the towel.
I had been scheduled for a sixty minute run and was disappointed with the short program. Although I have a 45-minute “tempo” slated for tomorrow, we are supposed to receive eight inches of snow so I returned to the treadmill tonight, determined to do my hour. Well, I figured doing two of the 28-minute sessions would suffice…
Consumed a heartier meal for dinner and returned to the hamster wheel with determination. It was not enjoyed and I swear it seemed to last much longer than running outdoors, but I stuck it out. Take me home to country roads…
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