Treadmill Running

First off, my 23 miles didn't happen today. Yesterday morning, I started to feel slightly nauseous in the morning, and by midday, it had grown into some major queasiness. I had pretty much lost my appetite and felt like I was on the verge of puking all day. By the time I got home from work, I did feel better, but still had no appetite and the thought of food made me feel sick. So I went to bed having not eaten for almost 24 hours and decided I would see how I felt when I woke up. When I got up this morning around 5AM, I felt better, but I didn't think going 23 on a completely empty stomach was a real great idea so I skipped the morning run. I was able to eat some breakfast though so I figured I was OK to try and run at lunch.

Now, for the most part I hate the treadmill. I kind of feel like it's cheating every time I climb on one, but sometimes I do it anyway. Today, for whatever reason, the thought of running outside just didn't appeal to me, so I stayed in at the gym and went on the treadmill. I realize that you can't really do straight comparisons between road running and treadmill running, but from what I can tell the efforts on the treadmills at my gym are pretty close to what I would be feeling on the road. Besides that, since I was forced to do a lot of running over the winter on these same treadmills, I do have a point of reference. I know what was tough for me 4 months ago on these machines, so it is always good to just kind of do a checkpoint to see if progress is being made.

So I wanted to spend some time at marathon pace, which for now, I'm saying is 6 min/mile. I did the first mile as a warm-up with half a mile at 9MPH and half a mile at 9.5 MPH. Then I set the treadmill to 10MPH and just tried to get into a rhythm. I was cruising along and feeling good through 5 miles, but then I noticed a big increase in effort. I kept pushing on, telling myself that this is the time, when you're really fighting it, that improvement happens. I took it a mile at a time and finally reached 8 miles at marathon pace. I then did a cooldown mile and called it a day. In all 10 miles total with 8 of them at 6 minute pace. A good workout. I'm still not sure how I'm gonna run 3 times that distance at that pace in 4 months, but hey, stranger things have happened. All in all, this was a good workout, and one that I could not have done a few short months ago.

So now I've backed myself into a corner for the weekend. I have to do a longrun either Saturday or Sunday and then do some decent mileage the other day as well. Normally, I like to do most of my really big mileage days earlier in the week so that I can kind of coast through the weekend and rest up for the next week. Unfortunately, that doesn't look possible this week. Such is the life I guess.