Treadmill 10 Miler

We got a few inches of snow last Wednesday. It was forecasted, and I knew it was coming, so I prepared myself to do my Thursday long run on a treadmill between classes. (For some reason, my weekly long run transitioned to Thursdays sometime about a month ago - I think we had a busy weekend planned, and it just made sense.) I've said this a lot over the last few winters, but I LOVE winter running - the only issue is when the footing isn't great, I run too "stiff" trying not to fall, and that f*cks up my knees/hamstrings. So I don't go outside unless the trails are clear.

So I hit the treadmill and did 2 miles easy. Then I told myself I'd slowly start descending every half mile for 6 miles. Then cool down with 2 more easy miles to hit 10 miles total.

I played with the incline a bit too. During my "descending" miles, if the time stayed the same from one split to the next, it's because I ran that 2nd split at an incline (only 1.0 - 1.5 percent) to make it "harder." I bumped it around 4 or 5 times throughout the run, but ran the majority of it flat.

My half-mile splits were:

Warm up: 3:45, 3:44, 3:39, 3:34

Descending 6 miles: 3:22, 3:20, 3:20, 3:18, 3:16, 3:16, 3:12, 3:10, 3:07, 3:04, 3:02, 3:01

(That's 8.9 mph up to 9.9 mph, with mile splits of 6:42, 6:38, 6:32, 6:22, 6:11, and 6:03)

Cool down: 3:58, 3:56, 3:55, 3:55

1:09:08 total time, 6:55 overall pace.

Here's a photo I Instagrammed post run:

Caption: My blurry view (sans glasses because they slip off) at the campus gym for my lunchtime run. No TV, music, or fan. Just a sweaty 10 miles with the middle 6 descending in 38:28 (6:24 pace). Now back to class... #DontSmellMeStudents #SlapOnSomeDeodorant

A few weeks ago, there was some class with little kids playing around in the gymnastics gym through those windows, but during my run last week, there was no entertainment. It was a good MENTAL run.

Afterwards, I left my swassy goodness to air out in my office:

Stanky.

And speaking of my work, I recently learned I got a small grant to make photos and play with different lighting set ups in a cabin in WI next summer. I posted a few details in this post on my Photo Blog. I'll be having more on that (on THAT blog) as the date draws closer. It's just a small thing, but I'm SUPER excited for it!

SIDENOTE: in case you're wondering why the treadmill says 1:09:18 but my I logged it as 1:09:08, it's because I don't start my watch until the treadmill is at least to a speed when I'm RUNNING. The treadmill takes a while to speed up to actually make me run, so all of my treadmill runs are really 0:08 - 0:10 longer than what I record.