How I learned to love the treadmill
Okay, so love may be too strong of a word, but it’s no lie that I spend a lot of time on the treadmill. It’s convenient and reliable way to run when the outside looks a little like this:
I thought I would share some tips on how you too can learn to love, or at least become buddies with this “evil” device.
Make a mental change – If you keep talking/thinking negative thoughts about the treadmill, you will hate the workout. Instead, stop calling it the dreadmill and thinking about how much you hate winter and the treadmill and yada, yada, yada. Just tell yourself you love the treadmill, and you can’t wait for your treadmill date. Say it enough times and you might believe it. Hey every change starts with a change of thought.
Give yourself something to look forward to – The treadmill is a great time to catch up on plenty of guilty pleasures. Have a new album you want to listen to? Perfect time to do it while running. Save your favorite podcast or audiobook for your run. That way, when it’s time to get busy on the treadmill, you can focus more on the audiobook and less on how boring your run is. My personal favorite thing to do on the treadmill is to watch TV teen dramas. Vampire diaries, Hart of Dixie, Gossip Girl and anything in between are perfect for the treadmill where you can listen and partially watch, but if you zoned out, you really didn’t miss too much. I have Hulu Plus for that main reason. Netflix also works, and even xfinity cable works on ipads/iphones but not as well.
Give your workout meaning – I still haven’t found the trick to doing long runs on the treadmill without dying of boredom. Running continuously and steady in one place is absolutely boring to me. Instead I save my speed workouts for the treadmill. Pushing yourself to hit speed targets on the road can be difficult with people, lights, cars and if you say the running 400s on the track is more exciting you are cray cray. Instead, I find that pushing yourself after setting the speed on a treadmill is much easier. Tempo runs, interval runs, progressive runs and any other speed play is my game.
Recognize the treadmill benefits – I think realizing the benefits of the treadmill vs. the road can make you appreciate this evil device a little more. For one, it’s a lot more forgiving than the road. I don’t know how the roads are in the rest of the country, but in Boston/NYC they are old, cracked, bumpy, uneven and concrete in general is purely unforgiving. I’ve been running 50-70 weekly miles for 2 years now with no injuries (knock on wood) and I think a large portion of that is that 50% or more of my miles are on the treadmill. There’s also the fact that you don’t have to worry about snow, rain, heat, coldness, cars, people, dogs and just the annoyance of the outside world in front of you. You can focus purely on your miles and form without those distractions.
I hope those few tips will get you started on appreciated the lonely treadmill just a tiny bit more.
Pretty Muddy Giveaway
As I hinted in my Pretty muddy against cancer post, I have some goodies. I have four entries ( 2 regular and 2 family edition) for the following cities/dates to giveaway
- Dallas, April 26th
- Sacramento, May 3rd
- Chicago, August 16th
- Richmond, September 20th
a Rafflecopter giveaway
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