It was dark this morning when it was time to go work out. It was also kind of rainy. School started today in my neighborhood, and that combined with the dark signal that summer is definitely coming to a close. Kind of sad. I enjoyed this summer because I’ve spent lots of time outside.
I have come to love running in the morning outside. Long runs, short runs… even though my route is the same most days, there’s always interesting stuff to see and having a destination somehow gives each run a purpose, even if it’s just to get home again. Outside, there are hills and changing weather and trees and other runners and it just breezes by, even on slow running days.
Today though, since I needed to do my last brick workout before next Sunday’s race, I had to go to the gym. I actually prefer the stationary bike because I don’t have to worry about cars, but even though I don’t know what I would have done without it in the beginning, I now understand the nickname I see so often for the treadmill – the dreadmill.
Running after biking is just not my favorite thing to do, under any circumstances. But doing it outside is a whole lot easier than jumping on the treadmill after a 10-mile bike. The treadmill doesn’t really allow for those points where I need to go slower or faster and because I don’t see my landmarks, it’s just me and the minutes.
Don’t get me wrong. The treadmill has its purpose and I’m sure as the weather gets colder I will be spending more and more time getting to know it and admire it again.
Without the treadmill, I never would have made it through Couch25K. Without the treadmill, I never would have become a runner. When I was interval training, those seconds, then minutes, ticking by made building up to running possible. It gave me the confidence that I could do this. The first couple of times that I took my new legs out on the road, I thought I might die and wished that I could do a triathlon in the pool, on the stationary bike and on the treadmill. But they don’t let you do triathlons in the gym, so I sucked it up and got better at running outside, never in the beginning thinking I’d ever trade the treadmill for the road in my heart. But I have.
This morning, I ran 2 miles after a 10-mile stationary bike training. I had to throw my towel over the readout so I couldn’t watch the minutes ticking by. It felt like an eternity. I tried playing with intervals, going faster, raising the incline. It still felt like an eternity, and it was only 23 minutes. I tried concentrating only on the music piping into my ears. I tried focusing on other people in the gym (there aren’t too many to focus on at 6:30 am). Maybe I was just tired, but the run felt long this morning and it was a short one.
Maybe I just wasn’t prepared for the transition back to running on the treadmill again. I certainly wasn’t ready when I transitioned to running on the road. I’m sure I will come up with ways to make the treadmill interesting again as I know I will be spending more time with it as the days get shorter and the air gets colder. Maybe by next Spring, I’ll be faster!
At least now I know that to mirror resistance on the road, I need to keep the treadmill at an incline of 1. That will make transitioning back to the road a whole lot easier. That and that I plan to run outdoors any chance I get during daylight hours.
How do you cope with treadmill boredom?
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