I'm getting tired of running at night. It's cold, people keep trying to hit me with their cars, and tonight it was raining off an on - a fact that only makes the coldness that much worse. To combat these problems I decided to go to the gym and run on the treadmill. This solution was not without problems though. To begin with, it's a treadmill and I haven't run on a treadmill for a very long time. the second major issue is that a treadmill, or at least the treadmills at the gym I go to, will only let me run for 40 minutes before stopping - so distance is out. Finally, the treadmill is, or at least can be, very boring. My solution to these problems was to run hard and fast and make sure I get a good workout in if I can't get distance. I decided that the first mile should be slow so I could adapt to the treadmill experience again and after a mile I felt just fine. So I took my speed up. It should be noted that the treadmill was always at a 1% incline to account for the friction that is experienced on the road but lacking on a treadmill. I ran the first mile at 8:57 pace then upped my pace to 7:47. I held the 7:47 pace for the next 1.5. After that I dropped my pace to 8:20 for a half mile to recover and then sped back up to 7:30 for another 1.3 miles. At the 4.3 mark I sped up again to an even 7:00 pace and maintained that until I hit 4.8 where I sped up again to 6:48 for the final .2. The 6:48 was tough to maintain, especially after running the 7:30 and 7:00 pace, so it's a good thing I only had to do that for a short distance. I found that running the treadmill this way was not only a great workout but that the treadmill was actually pretty fun like this. I still wish I could go for more distance, but I'll take what I can get I guess. | 