Tales from the Dreadmill

Posted: January 28th, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: run | Tags: run, Song of the Run | 1 Comment »

It took a feat of herculean will power to get me out of the house to do my long run today. The reason being mostly that I had to do it at the gym . . . on the treadmill. 25k (15.5 miles) on a treadmill while not quite being my idea of hell, is at least equal to purgatory. But you gotta do what you gotta do.

I haven’t really talked about it yet but I’ve been dealing with some pain from my right IT band and have been going to physio for it. I’ll talk about my treatment in more detail at another point but for right now I’m trying to run indoors, especially if there’s a lot of snow like there has been. I found that the snow and ice was so unstable to run on that I think it was really hurting my form and putting undue stress on my joints.

So that means I’m stuck on the treadmill for now.

If I were to compile a list of the pros of doing a long run on the treadmill it would look approximately like this:

Pros

- no snow

. . . and that’s about it.

I have nothing against treadmills for shorter runs and I love them for doing speed training but I never love a treadmill run and usually long runs are labours of love as much as anything else for me. I covet the outdoors and the challenges it brings as well as the beauty of the environment and the treadmill has none of that. Plus, I miss my runner’s high. I’ve never gotten a runner’s high on a treadmill and I doubt I ever will.

Anyway, enough whinging from me. The run actually wasn’t all that bad. I split it up into 4 different sessions so that I wasn’t using any one treadmill for too long and took about a 5min break in between each set to use the bathroom, fill my water, stretch and complain to my parents (who were also there working out) about how much long treadmill runs suck.

Stats:

Distance: 25km (15.5 miles)

Time: 2:27:00

Pace: 9:28 min/mile

I’m definitely happy with the pace. I was only supposed to maintain a 9:45 min/mile pace according to my training plan but I find the treadmill a bit easier than outside because of the lack of hills (I do always run on at least a 1.0 incline, though) so I tried to keep my pace a little higher. It helped with the boredom too.

Anyway, no real knee pain, other than the typical general soreness I get and my legs only got really sore on the last 5km or so.

Song of the Run: MGMT – Weekend Wars

This is a new band to me and I’ve really been enjoying their stuff. This song is pretty mellow which made it good for a long run and it just has a nice groovy beat that kept me from getting bored.

In other news (not really) – I officially have the ugliest feet on the planet. If two marathon runners feet got together and had babies my feet would be what those baby feet had nightmares about.

I’ve always had ugly callused feet, which never really bothers me because I like them that way. I live 80% of my life barefoot so I need a solid foundation But now they’re just nasty. I’m pretty sure I’m about to lose one of my toenails and more will likely follow and I have about 6 separate blisters on the arches of my feet. Good times.

Alright, I’m done icing my knees and I need to go make a quick dinner and get off to work. Have a good night all you night sleepers

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