running in place

Total Distance So Far: 45.6 miles

Today I was scheduled for a 30 minute run. Around 11:45 I left my desk for the little employee shower room, changed into my running kit, got slathered up with sunblock, strapped on my Garmin, took a sip of water, and headed out into the pretty weather of low-60's and partially overcast skies. Good runnin weather.

I switched on my Garmin, and it said 0 hours of battery left. Shutting down.

ACK!

I stood there for a bit, dumbfounded. I had drained my Garmin of it's lifeforce by mistake. I must have forgotten to turn it off on Monday night. oops.

I considered running without my Garmin, and realized I really didn't want to do that. I'd be depressed if I didn't know distance and time. Just straight up, not gonna do. I went and grabbed my stuff in the shower room, and marched across my work campus to the fitness center. I was going to treadmill my 30 minutes today.

All three treadmills were free, so I took the one on the right. Poked at it for a bit to get it to start moving, and then immediately set it to a 9:30 minute mile pace, and tried to settle into a rhythm. After about 4 minutes I found myself kinda struggling with maintaining this pace, so I slowed down to a 10 minute mile.

run run run run run run run.

Man, running in place is boring. The only thing to do that is visually stimulating is to watch the treadmill display, and then you start agonizing over every second. What? that was only 15 seconds? weird! Huh, I've got like 25 more minutes to run, this sucks.

run run run run run run run.

I became painfully aware of my body. My lower back was aching a little... one of my knees had a little pain.

run run run run run run run.

Dude, 24:30 more minutes to run, this sucks.

About halfway, I started to get more into the rhythm of the treadmill, and was entertaining myself by staring out the window at a tree directly infront of me, that I never seemed to get any closer to. Still, you can only stare at a tree so long before you wonder, "how long was I staring at the tree? 1 minute? hm."

I became elated when someone would walk across the parking lot in front of the window. It gave me something to use as a control to guage the passage of time with. It gave me something, however mundane, to WATCH. Anything is better than literally watching the seconds tick away.

I did notice that I no longer was obsessing about my body. My back and knee no longer felt like anything. I was just chugging along.

In the last 7 minutes I noticed I kept bumping the console with my hands... I guess I wanted to go a little faster than a 10 minute mile. So, in response, I pumped the speed back up to 9:30. I was only able to manage that for like, 45 seconds before I felt like I was possibly pushing myself too much. Back down to a 10 minute mile.

The last 5 minutes of the run flew by. I'd have to thank the cafeteria worker who took that opportunity to have her cigarette break and talk on her cell phone in front of the window. Thank you dear girl.

I pushed myself at a 9 minute mile pace for the last 10 seconds. ooo, living on the edge! The clock hit 30 minutes, I desperately tried to slow the treadmill down to a fast walking pace to allow my heart rate to come down gracefully. The treadmill just doesn't adjust fast enough to make that easy.

While walking, I decided to put my hands on the heart rate monitor to see what my heart rate was at. 166! whoah. I watched as it slowed down slowly.

Catching my breath, I looked to see that my run today was 31:48 minutes long (including walking cool down), at a distance of 3.15 miles [I'm guessing thats a 9:40 minute mile avg pace]. The treadmill said I had burned over 300 calories too. hm. I know I was sweating like a pig.

Deep breath, I climbed off the treadmill and dealt with the vertigo of actually MOVING when I took a step. funky. I caught a glimpse of me in the full wall mirror, not a pretty sight. It looked like I had just run 30 minutes non-stop. oof.

Remind me to never let my Garmin die again. I don't think I much like running in place. Time goes slower.