- Day off today!
I think the ultimate mental endurance excercise for me is running any distance on the tredmill. I'd say I hate it, but considering the snow covered ice of an excuse for sidewalks, I'm happy to be able to run indoors. However, ten minutes into a tredmill run, I won't be about to admit it. It it wasn't for listening to Marathon Talk (which I love they let you download old episodes), or NPR I don't think I could do much past 20 minutes. One time, I just gave up on the tredmill halfway through a 6 mile run, and just went out into the freezing rain
Aside from staying safe and warm (too warm in my gym's case) there are a few advantages of running on a redmill.
- Watching TV - I get to combine the two biggest time-sucks of my life into one awesome activity
- An excuse to listen to PodCasts. (CarTalk, MarathonTalk, ThisAmericanLife, and Wait Wait Don't Tell Me are some of my favorites to listen to.
- I get to check myself out in the mirror while I run - no, not like Narcissus, but instead to watch my right foot hit in that funny way and try to stop it from doing that.
- Setting the grade to 1.0 - I've found a slight slope to the tredmill can help on days I'm sore. It reduces the impact a bit, makes the run physically more challenging, and can be your excuse the guy next to you has his set faster (his slope is zero -pssh)
- Setting the pace - tredmills, even if they're not super accurate, still keep a constant pace. This is tough on the streets, so its good to know you'e running consistently (or slowly pushing up the pace to 'beat' the guy next to you)
- Because rules are meant to be broken - it's fun to see the signs "limit your time on the cardio machines to 30 minutes" (of course, I wouldn't do this during peak hours when anyone cares)
- Shorts - yeah, it hasn't been that cold of winter - but I've been running in long pants since November. Its nice to be in short sleeves and shorts and still dripping sweat.
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