I feel like I have written a similar point in the past.  And I probably have.  Case in point- the nice line of bruises running up my spine from backing into the side of a door last week.  I have mad skills like that.  🙂

After getting off work on Tuesday, I headed to the gym.  I wanted to run but wasn’t looking forward to the treadmill.    I remembered my Garmin this time so I decided to see how it did tracking distance again.    I just put my phone on the treadmill screen/ display- what do you call that?   Every year it seems like it takes me a while to adjust to the treadmill.  I always feel a little sore when I first start running.  It wears off around a mile in but it’s still kind of odd.

I wasn’t feeling quite up to speed work but I decided to try to run as steady a pace as possible.  I wanted to see how far I could get before taking a walk break.    My lungs and my stomach behaved, woo hoo!   Looking at my splits later, it was kind of like a mini tempo run.  At least for what is my pace these days.  🙂  Barring a few issues, I ran 3.5 miles straight.

As for the calamity?  I wanted to run but I was having issues.  I kept the pace around 5.9  most of the time but kept punching the front of the treadmill.  At one point, I over balanced and had to pull myself out of a fall.  I think my arms were doing a little pin wheel at this point.   I righted myself, upped the speed a bit and kept plugging on.   Apparently my legs were feeling really good and wanted to go faster because I continued to run into the front of the treadmill.   So much so that I accidentally punched the stop button and the treadmill came to a halt.   How I didn’t smash my face against the front, I have no idea.

I managed to get the treadmill started fairly quickly and grabbed a drink of water while bringing it back up to speed.   I shouldn’t multitask.  The lid to water bottle went flying over a few treadmills and landed next to the ellipticals.  Seriously?!   I powered on for another mile before hitting what would have been mile 4 before I had to start over.  I decided to start my cool down but instead of hitting the speed button I hit the cord from my ear buds and knocked my phone down.  I watched it bounce on the treadmill and then slide offonto the ground.   Ugh.  Now I also had the attention of everyone running on the treadmills to my right.   In my efforts to slow down, I once again hit stop.  By the time I came to a stop, someone else had picked up my phone and handed it to me.  Thank you, kind stranger.

I decided I was done for the night.  I called it at 4 miles and just stretched out.  I was worried about not cooling down properly but I was taking the hint.  From everything I had seen on the machine readout and my Garmin, they pretty much matched minus my stop issue in the middle.   I didn’t look at my splits until later and when I did I was kind of happy.   I also noticed that I must have hit the split button at some point but don’t remember doing it.  All I see is that outside of my warm up, my average pace was under 10.  Woo hoo!!!  I haven’t seen that in months!

I came to find a delivery.  I’ve had a few fun mail days lately.  First I ordered a few books.  I am looking forward to reading 80/20.  Then I found out that my 25k in January only has one aid station.  I had to reassess the fueling situation, so I ordered myself a little something- well it’s not exactly small-I haven’t decided about it yet.  I really wanted pockets on the front and while I got those, I am wondering about how comfortable it will be.

How has your week been?

Ever feel achy on a treadmill?

Ever punch a treadmill?  Or worse- fall off?

Ever use a vest like this?  Thoughts?

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