Saturday, January 21, 2012

Redefining My Impossible

I'm not gonna lie, today's 3 mile run was rough.

A lot of you may already know this, although some of you may not- but running on a treadmill does not exert as much energy as running outside. There's no wind resistance. So in order to mimic outdoor running, you should turn the incline up to 1% or more. Here's a useful link if you want to figure out what pace you're actually running: Treadmill Pace Conversions

So although I knew this already, for the past month and a half I've been running at a 0% incline to avoid an ITBS relapse. Steep inclines and hills can aggravate it, and although 1% isn't exactly steep, I wasn't taking any chances.

I could not believe the difference in effort! It was absolutely ridiculous! (And now some of you out there are probably thinking, "Well, DUH.")

I mean, obviously I knew it was going to be harder, but I still planned on trying to run my second mile at an 8:00 pace. Instead, I ran half of the second mile at a 8:25 pace and ran the rest at roughly a 9:00 pace.

But I refuse to get discouraged!! Just three weeks ago I didn't think I could run faster than 6.5 mph on the treadmill, and lately I've been running at 7.1 mph. If I could get comfortable with a speed increase, I can get comfortable with an incline increase.


After our work out, Ben headed up to the cities. Since then, I've been cleaning all day, while also taking frequent breaks to watch college basketball, roll out my IT band, and of course, update the look of my blog. I decided to just elaborate on the dinosaur theme- what do you think?

Girls Night In commences in T-minus 1 hour. I bought my favorite beer to enjoy with the pizza were having:

 

Thank goodness liquor stores in Minnesota started carrying it! When we first moved down here, I even tried to special order it (along with Alaskan Amber), but no one would do it for me. Now it's everywhere!

Did you run today?

What's your favorite drink to have with your pizza?


What are your favorite pizza toppings?

2 comments:

  1. I think the dinosaur theme is cute :)

    I haven't run today but will head out soon- always run on a sunday! I did 7 miles last night.

    Don't worry about pace too much... in races you always run heaps faster!

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    1. Hey Josie- love your blog! Let's be friends :)

      I'm planning on getting a little 4-miler in later today. You're right, I think I've been worrying about pace too much lately... I'll just do what I can do at a 1% incline and be happy with that!

      Enjoy your run today!

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