Tuesday, February 01, 2011

Treadmill Fun

So, yeah. Snowstorm. For, like, 100 million of us or so. Now, I for one enjoy a good snowstorm in my line of work. It gives me an excuse to sit in my PJ's all day--except, of course, for the time I spend on the treadmill.

I used to think treadmills were EVIL! and the work of the devil. I've come to accept and even feel a twinge of--dare I say it?--love for my 'mill. It allows me to run during naptime, before school when it's too dark to go it alone, and, of course, during historic ice/snowstorms.

I thought I'd share a couple of my favorite treadmill workouts that superawesome Coach Emily has prescribed me. These are just hard enough that you read them and think, "Hmmm. That's not too bad." And then you start them and think, "Holy crap, is my heart going to BEAT OUT OF MY CHEST?"

(Or maybe that's just me)


Anyway, for those of you stuck inside due to extreme ice, here's a few workouts to try!

You can adjust your paces accordingly. My Zone 2 is around 9-9:15 minutes/mile. That's the pace I feel like I could go forever at, so start with that pace and then work up or down from there.

Workout 1:

20 minutes building to Zone 2
5 minutes at 7.2 mph
5 minutes at 7.5 mph
4 minutes at 7.8 mph
3 minutes at 6.5 mph
3 minutes at 7.8 mph or higher (I made it to 8.5! Yippeeekayyay!)
20 minutes to cool down

Workout 2:

20 minutes building to Zone 2 to warm up
3X (6 minutes at 7.6-8.0mph with 3 minutes easy in between)
20-25 minutes at Zone 2 to cool down

I know, right? They don't look that hard. But when I'm doing the workouts, I really have to focus. The tready is helping me win the head game a bit, and as soon as this ice thaws out I'll jump at the chance to try a nice hard tempo on the road!

Happy training--and stay warm!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think treadmills/bike trainers instill a tremendous amount of mental toughness and pacing that "real" outdoor training can't provide.
Amazing splits!
You are going to ROCK that marathon! :-)

Christi said...

Thanks for the workout. I will have to try it out.

Doris said...

Oh my that second workout is recently familiar and I can confirm by the end of the last set it is both cruel and evil.... But highly satisfying!

SixTwoThree said...

That does look challenging!

Jake said...

The workout routines are great, and I don't think I can make it, really big challenge to me.

Carolina John said...

Good treadmill workout! Well done.

allanjel said...

I am not gonna join you on the TM wagon. I will forever dislike those things BLAH :(

As for your workouts in my mind I translated it to mean:

Workout 1: PUKE ZONE and on to DEAD ZONE
Workout 2: PUKE ZONE and on to DEAD ZONE

Simple, but effective.

I can't wait to see you set new PRs at every distance this year. You are undoubtedly gonna raise the bar!

Andy said...

Thank you for the "dreadmill" workout ideas. If you can get me to like the treadmill again, you will be my new best friend. I quit using the treadmill years ago, unless I have no other choice (ie the weather is to bad or road condiditons are too dangerous to run on).

BTW funny thing you talked about how many people are affected by the snow. When we had the snow in GA the second week of January, there was a stat that came out taht 40 out of the 50 states had snow in them (FL was the only state that had none). Crazy huh?