Treadmill Tempo Run

Ryan has been working late for the past few nights due to a catalogue deadline. He called me around 7:30pm last night. I thought he was calling to let me know he was on his way home, but that was not exactly how the call turned out... He was TRYING to come home, but the car wouldn't start... We bought the car new from the dealer (something we NEVER do) and have had all of the service done at said dealer, so I was EXTREMELY surprised to hear it wasn't starting for him. I've never had any issues before (but honestly I was selfishly thinking I was glad it was him and not me having the problem). Thankfully one of his co-workers was able to give it a jump and he was able to drive it home. [FYI He had trouble starting it again this morning, so took it by the dealership and was told we needed a new battery... Hopefully that was it.]

Normally Wednesdays are my sunrise runs at the beach, but with the car being questionable I decided I didn't want to get stuck with a dead car at 6 in the morning, so decided to postpone my run. I wasn't quite sure what I would do, though, seeing as it was supposed to be my 6 mile tempo run and I didn't think I'd be able to keep pace around my house with all the hills. That's when I remembered I had to go into the office today for a meeting - PERFECT! One of the perks of our office is we can use the hotel gym in the building our office is attached to.

Source

I figured I would do my tempo run on one of the treadmills. Sure, the scenery wouldn't be as great, but running on the treadmill would help to keep a consistent pace. I have to say, I was pretty nervous about it. First, I haven't been on one since Christmas at my parents house (which was a pretty rickety one) and second, I was slightly worried about the pace I had to run and really didn't want to fly off the back of it :)

Thankfully the pace didn't seem too terrible (it wasn't "easy", but I also wasn't huffing and puffing). I MUCH APPRECIATED that the treadmill told me that minute/ mile pace that the "speed" correlated with (again, treadmills are pretty foreign to me, so I wasn't sure if I was going to have to spend a while guessing and checking my speed and doing math in my head). I kept the pace at 8:00/mile for the first 5.75 miles and then sped it up for the last little bit.

It ended up taking me 47:50 to get in 6 miles AND I didn't fall off the treadmill - so TWO THUMBS UP. I DID have to mop up my sweat afterwards, since I made the treadmill pretty soggy, but I figured it was probably better than trying to run outside during the hottest part of the day...

I would definitely consider the treadmill a BIG success (especially with the apprehensions I had prior to doing). Now I'm not saying I will trade in my beach scenery for ESPN any time soon (of course I watch ESPN while running), but I am glad that I have OPTIONS!

Oh yeah, and just in case you forgot, (although my legs sure didn't), I still had to ride my bike home AFTER my treadmill tempo ride... That wasn't the easiest ride, for sure, but I made it!