First Long Treadmill Run in 2 Years

Last Monday morning, my boys had "remote" school and then we headed to Afton State Park to spend the night in a yurt. (There are photos and a few videos of our stay in the yurt in Saturday's post.) But I got up early and hit our new treadmill in the basement for 10.8 miles.

Some GOOD NEWS about our new treadmill: it doesn't force you to start a cool down (or some equal sort of crappy "reset") after 60 minutes like the ones at my Y and my college weight room do! Sweet! (But I still hate that there's no hundreths place for overall distance - just tenths.)

I just ran easier for 2 miles, and then I upped the pace to 8.7 mph. Then I sped up by 0.1 mph every half mile until I had ran 6 "harder" miles ending at 9.8 mph for the last half mile. So my half-mile splits for those 6 miles were 3:26, 3:25, 3:22, 3:19, 3:18, 3:16, 3:12, 3:11, 3:09, 3:08, 3:06, and 3:03 for a total of 39:00.48 (6:30.0/mile pace).

Shorts nearly soaked through on the front (totally soaked through on the back).

Regarding being sweaty: I weighed myself just before the run. During the run, I drank 24 oz of water (weighed it on my kitchen scale). Post-run, I was down 1.4 lbs, and that doesn't include the 1.5 lbs that I drank, so I really lost (sweated out?) 2.9 lbs during those 75 minutes!

After the workout, I checked back to the winter of 2018/2019 when I really started to do lots of indoor long runs (as I realized my "forced" running form on slippery surfaces really ticked off my knee). Two years ago, I found this run that was pretty much the same! I did my "harder" 6 miles during that run 2 years ago in 39:03 (or 6:30.5/mile pace). In case you'd like me to run the math for you, that's the same distance but just 3 seconds slower 2 years ago.

I still FEEL like I'm "coming back from an injury," but I've known that I've been "back" since the virtual TC 10 Mile 2 months ago. So I need to stop looking back to say "Oh that's great - I'm doing what I used to be doing. I'm getting back at it." I'm already back and just need to focus and running strong and staying healthy!