I went to the gym today to beat the heat. I hate treadmill running. It's soooooo boring. So I decided to have fun with speed today and just ran a 5k.
I put the incline at 1.0 because I've read that it has to be at that incline to make it at all comparable to running outside.
I started out first 1/2 mile on 6.8 speed which felt pretty easy. (about 8:45 pace)
Then I ramped it up to 7.2 for the next 1.5 miles. (8:20 pace)
When it said I was at the 2 mile mark, I started increasing speed every 1/4 mile. So I did a quarter mile at 7.4 (8:06 pace), then another quarter at 7.6 (7:54 pace), then a quarter at 7.8 (7:42 pace) and a quarter at 8.0 (7:30 pace).
When it said I was at the 3 mile mark, I increased speed to 10.0 (6:00 pace) and ran the last .1 mile of my "5k" at that speed.
My final time was 25:10 for the 3.1 mile run... but that included my 1/2 mile warm-up. Looks like I averaged 8:10 a mile. I wish I had time to do it again and see if I could do better without a warm-up but I had to leave to get my kids. Maybe I'll do it again tomorrow.
Wanna hear something funny? I used to run in college on my apartment gym's treadmill all the time. I didn't race back then... I just did it to stay in shape... BUT I do remember that I would run on a 5.5 speed most of the time and I thought 6.0 was fast. When I was in really good shape and wanted to show off to a cute guy in the gym, I'd crank it up to 6.5 but I couldn't hold that for long. Ha, ha!
It still kinda makes me nervous putting the speed on the treadmill higher and higher... even though I know I can do it... I don't know why. I also get nervous when I see on my watch that I'm running "too fast"... even if I don't feel bad at that speed, if I look down and see a 7 something, I freak out a little... and then I have to talk myself out of being nervous. I think I've got some kind of mental block I've got to get passed. Maybe if I keep doing tempos at track or treadmill I can overcome this.
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