Treadmill Mile Repeats

I did some mile repeats on the treadmill on Friday morning, because it looked like this outside:

View down our alley.

My last *treadmill* workout like that was in Charlotte in February, so I looked back to that workout for treadmill settings. (And I settled on mile repeats because my previous speed day before this was the Turkey Day 5K, so I didn't want to run another 5K tempo again... and before that was a short interval workout at the track.)

In this same workout from February, I started the 3 intervals at 10.8 mph, 11.0 mph, and 11.3 mph, and that was my plan for starting this workout. I wanted to see if I could re-create that workout. And I ended up doing that exactly. My first 2 intervals were similar: ran for 0.4 miles, sped up by 0.1 mph, ran another 0.4 miles, sped up another 0.1 mph, and then held that until the end of the mile. In my 3rd interval, I sped up a few more times: instead of just twice, I think I sped up 3 times (at 0.4, 0.6, and 0.8 miles, finishing the last 0.2 miles at 11.6 mph. Here's what I ran:

[taking half-mile splits]

1.3 warm-up (7.8 mph and faster): 3:52, 3:46, 2:14
0.2 miles walking: 2:35

2:46 + 2:45 = 5:31.6
0.2 mile walking: 2:15

2:43 + 2:41 = 5:25.5
0.2 mile walking: 2:05 (speeding up at 1:30, which was right on)

2:40 + 2:35 = 5:16.1

0.3 mile walking: 3:51 (including waking up boys)
1.0 mile cool-down: 3:52, 3:49

Note: our treadmill is SLOW to change speed, so as I noted before the final interval, I have to speed it up after 1:30 rest and it's just barely getting up to speed at 2:05, which is 35 seconds later.

The sweaty treadmill after.


HR was MUCH higher than that!


My Garmin splits.

I've noted this before: my Garmin says my slower treadmill miles are always longer, and my faster treadmill miles are always shorter. It just goes off "arm swing," so I don't know what that says about my form. So I make sure to take splits on my Garmin when the treadmill crosses the correct distance - I don't go by my Garmin for distance while on the treadmill. On a "normal" longer run (not intervals) it averages out to be pretty correct in the end, with my slower miles being "longer" and my faster miles being "shorter."

Well, a decent start to a winter of treadmill speed sessions. I'll try to better that by spring!