But I read all the books! And I decided which methods made sense and which didn’t (because, remember, I knew things). I knew which method I was going to use and according to the method, whether or not the baby was colicky in the beginning, by this point, I would be sleeping uninterrupted all night long, which would make it easy for me to wake up as early as 5:30 so I could get a workout in before the baby woke up at 7, without even having to impact Dan at all. It was going to be fabulous! I remember chatting with a friend who at the time had a baby and a toddler. She was training for a marathon and she said she would usually run a few times a week while the kids were with a babysitter. I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t just run before the kids woke up. She told me her youngest gets up by 6:15 and I thought “Oh, I hope I don’t have one of those kind of babies.” If there’s a god, he was probably shaking his head and chuckling at me.
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| Gratuitous picture of Sweet Pea sleeping. |
Because everything isn’t exactly going to plan, I need to be creative about fitting in workouts. Which is why I ended up doing my last long run before the half marathon on the treadmill from about 7 to 9pm this evening. I set it for a 1.0% grade and ran two miles to warm up, then three miles at tempo (turned out to be 7:41-8:00 pace), a mile easy, and repeated that two more times, and cooled down for a mile, for a total of 14 miles.
I have another confession: I was secretly looking forward to this run. I had so much fun on the treadmill during my last 14 miler, I was hopeful that it would be similar this time. I’m not going to lie. It was pretty fun. I watched an episode of Weeds and all of Mean Girls on Netflix. The two hours went by fast.
Now that I am crazy enough to not only complete 14 miles on a treadmill twice in one season, but also like it, I think I am authorized to publish my Official Pros and Cons of running on a treadmill
Pros:
1-You can watch TV
2- You don’t have to carry your nutrition or hydration
3-The bathroom is closeby
4-You can leave a washcloth handy to wipe sweat
5-If you are trying to hold a challenging pace, you just set the mill and make sure you don’t fall off; no major mental focus required
6-Your outfit doesn’t have to match
7- No sunscreen is required
8-You never have to wait for a signal on your Garmin
9-You will never roll your ankle on a rogue acorn or pinecone, then hobble around a little and hope there were no witnesses
10- No wind. I hate wind!!
Cons
1- You don’t get to actually go anywhere
2- No fresh air
3- Can’t get a tan
4- You are afraid you won’t be able to replicate your performance on the road due to #5
5- See #5, above.
6- You may stop the mill to come upstairs and see what smells funky/ check if the baby is crying/ pile a few chairs up against the door because you are paranoid an intruder will attempt to break in and steal the baby and you won’t even be able to hear it from the basement. Hypothetically, of course.
7- No chance you are going to pass world-class athletes (running in the opposite direction, that is). Yes, this totally happens in Boulder, it’s pretty cool. Did you know I once sat in the hot tub at my gym with Chrissie Wellington?
8- No chance to practice running downhill
9-No one will see if you do end up wearing something cute
10- If you aren’t careful, you can have real issues with either coming very close to damaging your ear on the earbud that’s connected to your iPad, or else coming close to damaging said iPad forever, should it fall on the mill. Again, totally hypothetically.