Educated On A Treadmill
Ok growing up in Chicago I learned to love the winter months. As a youngster I remember spending hours at the toboggan shoots going up and down the hills and ice skating at the local ice rink until we couldn't feel our toes anymore, then coming in for a cup of piping hot chocolate. One winter we had this massive snowstorm and my Dad let us climb to the top of our garage roof and go sledding off of it on those red plastic saucers. Man, talk about a great time. I still remember that amazing feeling as I was flying through the air. Now, that was fun. Last year when we were blessed with a huge snowfall, I followed in my Dad's footsteps and took my two kids sledding off of our garage roof into these big snowbanks that we made. Shannon and Ian had a blast. I however, was a bit more apprehensive about what we were about to do. Nevertheless, it was fun and I am sure that neither one of them will ever forget that feeling of flying through the air.
Running in the cold doesn't bother me. I even did a race once called the "Freeze Yer Gizzard Blizzard 10K" in International Falls Minnesota. It was super cold. The temperature was -20 with a windchill of
-30. It was a fun race and I am happy to say that I did it once. Not too sure if I would do it again, but it was a good time and we met some great people. The whole weekend was great. At the post race party we won some "cold cash" (no kidding, it was $50 frozen in ice), partied with the Mayor of International Falls and met a guy who took us ice fishing on this huge lake in his hut. Definitely a race weekend to remember.
So, running in the cold is part of my life, except when I have to do a speed workout on fresh snow. Yesterday, the Chicagoland area got some snow. Not too much, but enough to make the streets icy and had me wondering how I was going to do an 8:10 pace on an ice rink. This is one of those days where I wished I owned a treadmill. My workout today was 17.5 miles and I really didn't think it would be too polite to run on a treadmill at the Courts for close to 3 hours. What to do, what to do, what to do. Well, luckily a friend of mine who lives a block over from me, offered the use of her treadmill for my run. So, at 5:00 a.m. I bundled up and went to her house to start my workout. The farthest I have ever run on a treadmill was 9 miles. How in the world was I going to run 17.5? This was going to be a mental challenge. I usually run with an iPod that has certain playlists for different distances. Today however, I think I was going to need some visual help to get through this. I set up the treadmill for my 1 mile warmup and clicked on the television to help pass the time. Let's see, 5:15 am on a Saturday morning, what was on.......NOTHING. Nothing good anyway. So, I had to find something of interest. As I surfed through the channels I came across this Home Project channel. Hmmm, I thought. Maybe there was a home project that I could learn about and add it to John's "honey do" list. The host of the show was kind of creepy and the people's homes that he went to were immaculate and of course only needed this one thing fixed or added to increase the value of their home. Yeah, thats just like my house; NOT. Just one thing needs fixing...yeah right. Anyway, the first project was building a tree house with your neighbor that stretched across both properties. That could be a problem in the future if the neighbor relationship changes. The next project was a new ceiling in the families' foyer. I liked this one because the woman was doing most of the work while the husband was standing there holding the baby. And the final visit was to this guys's house who builds baseball bats out of chunks of wood. So, lucky for John, we don't have a tree in our backyard to build a treehouse and any bat that I would use to play softball would be a composite bat, but, I did make some mental notes for a new ceiling that John can put in our basement. Ran my speed set while watching the Business Report and finished my last 9.5 miles with the Today show. I didn't realize that running on a treadmill could be so educational. I was so happy when I was on my last mile. There is so much more to see when you are running outside but I was glad that I was surefooted this morning. If I would have had just a plain long run, I would have run on the streets, but I wanted to be sure that my pace was in check, so for today, the treadmill was the way to go. Thank you Julie for letting me run at your house in the wee hours of the morning. I would not have ben able to get it in before Ian's Pinewood Derby without your help. You are a lifesaver.
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| Ian at his last pinewood derby before he moves up to Boy Scouts |
Today's Workouts:
Workout #1
LSD with controlled Race Pace
Completed: 17.5 miles Treadmill 1% incline
Workout #2
Planed Distance: 1200 yards
Completed:
1400 yards
Did 3 sets + an extra 200 with fins to work on pull stroke.
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