I have been thinking if I should try running 3.5 miles or push it to 4 miles all day. I came to the decision of doing 4 miles based on that last week I ran for 3.1 miles so I am doing another 9 minutes to get to my goal. The other thought was that last week when I completed the runs I was not that much out of breath and felt I still had a little more in me. My only concern was can I do this without any injuries. I had not run since Thursday so I thought today would be the best day being I have had 3 days rest.
Soon as I got home I grabbed the Garmin and created a workout that consisted of a 5 minute walk, 4 miles run, followed by another 5 minute walk. I got myself ready and then jumped on the treadmill. I had opened a couple of windows for ventilation and to cool the room down, but the temperature was still 21.5c (10c outside temperature).
I started the treadmill of at 4 mph which is the standard speed I use to warm up with and carried on until the Garmin beeped and vibrated, this was the signal that the 5 minutes were up and it was time to start the run.
The first 5 minutes in to the run went by fairly quickly as I got carried away listening to a Formula 1 podcast, this was a talk about the Chinese Grand Prix that happened on Sunday. 7 minutes in to the run I started to feel a twinge in my left foot, I am thinking to myself ‘marvellous, that is all I need now’. I started to concentrate on how I was landing on the foot and trying slightly different positions to land, but within 2-3 minutes that twinge went away.
I found that about every 5 minutes I was taking a sip of water as I was getting a dry mouth, even though I was not breathing very heavy. I found that time went by fairly quickly while I was zoned out listening to the podcast, I felt like a mechanical machine just going through the motions until it was time to finish the run and start the 5 minute cool down walk.
It only became apparent to me that I had run further when I finally stopped the treadmill to do a few stretches, I did feel a bit more tired than normal. I uploaded the data from the Garmin to the Garmin Connect website to have a look at the data. I think what I will aim to do is another 4 mile run next Monday and then compare the data to see if I have improved enough to run a little bit further.
Garmin Connect
Treadmill - 5min-4mile-5min
Well done Graham! And even more congrats for running on a treadmill!
ReplyDeletePersevere with the outdoors running though - pace is key - run slowly as you can - there's no machine to dictate your pace. It might be worth seeing if you get on with the Virtual Partner on your 610 to help out with this.
I have taken your advice and have been running outside this year, I have really improved a lot. I think the problem with the treadmill is there is nothing to look at apart from yourself in the mirror.
ReplyDeleteI have been running further now as you will notice in some of my latest blog posts.