I have posted in the past about my feelings for treadmills. In fact I think I usually refer to them as 'dreadmills.' But living in New England makes them a necessary evil. This past week, I had my first interval workout since before the Philly Marathon. Most outdoor tracks are covered with a couple inches of snow and I don't have access to an indoor track (and I'm a track coach??). So I decided to do my intervals on the treadmill.
I learned two very valuable lessons:
1. While I can't read on the TM, I can flip through a magazine and look at pictures. I grabbed a couple guilty pleasure magazines (People, US Weekly) that I knew would have lots of celebrity pictures. Before I knew it, I was 3 miles into my warm up!
2. Intervals on a TM really aren't that bad.....I actually kind of like it! It was nice to be able to set the pace for each speed interval and just run. Don't get me wrong, I still like running ovals on a track better, but this is a good alternative. (Don't worry, I ditched the magazines during my intervals!)
Being my first speed session in 2 months, I eased into it with 5 x 800m repeats with 400m recoveries. My pace averaged 3:30-3:34 for the 800m (7:00-7:08 min/mile pace). Finished with a couple miles cool down (with my magazine!) and I had a nice 8 mile run....on the treadmill!
So while I wouldn't call us BFFs yet, I think I might be changing my mind on treadmills!
6 comments:
Thanks for the suggestion. While I agree that HIIT is efficient in burning calories, it doesn't help much when training for a marathon. For that I need longer intervals (800m are really the shortest distance I do). I do incorporate 100m strides after some of my easy runs which is similar to HIIT.
I'm going to have to suck it up and do my hill workout on a TM this week. Will be working in Austin and I have no idea as to where I'd run outdoors much less somewhere with at least a 5% grade over a quarter mile. ugh. Should pick up some mags for the warm-up and cool down, good idea!
Yup, totally a love/hate relationship for me, too. Weather makes the TM a necessity at times, and I'd rather run on a TM than not run at all, but I certainly couldn't do it all the time. I look at it as a necessary evil, that's for sure!
Good for you for getting an interval workout in on one! I tend to get lazy and just do steady-state or recovery-pace runs and move harder workouts to another day when I can be outdoors.
I personally like using a treadmill. I'm not a fan of carrying water with me on runs so a treadmill is a nice way to fix that. I always would rather to run outside before going on a treadmill, but for intervals it's kinda nice.
Haha. In Houston I have the opposite problem! Too hot too run! And now that all I do is study I don't have time to run until after dark, and people keep telling me it's unsafe to run here in the dark. So I've had to learn to like the treadmill too! The ones at my gym have TV's on them...
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