10 miles 84:01 minutes at 1% – done on the treadmill to avoid freezing my face (and various appendages) off

So with the brutal temperatures when I got up this morning (-29 / -38 C // -20 / -36 F) I decided I was not going to survive running 10 miles outside.  I might be crazy (or Goofy as the case may be) but I don’t think I am quite at that level of crazy.  Since I have had a few issues getting in my tough weeks / weekends as part of my Goofy Challenge training for January I knew I had to do this run no matter what.

I looked at a few of the places here in town that have indoor tracks and the one I am most familiar with is not available this weekend and the next most convenient has a drop in fee of $15 – which is a bit steep for a run that I could do on the treadmill easily enough.  Plus time is a bit tight today so travelling anywhere around town to get on a track didn’t really fit.

So I finally decided to suck it up and get on the treadmill.  I was kind of dreading it but really if I think about it I wasn’t really dreading doing the 10 mile today on the treadmill – what I was really worrying about was the 20 miler tomorrow.  That I am dreading.

But today went well – I set up some scenery videos on my video monitor in front of the treadmill to watch, put on my faster running playlist, set a steady pace and just went.  It took about 20-30 minutes to settle in but after that it felt pretty good and I even started doing some speed bursts topping out at 9 mph after about the 45 minute mark.  In the end I felt more with it today on the treadmill than I have all week – strong and focussed and able to get in a groove.  Nice.  (still dread the 20 miler tomorrow though)

So I did the 10 miles in 84:01 with a total of 4 minutes of walking in there.  Most of the run was done at 7 mph and after a while that felt too slow – which was a nice confidence booster.

It will be interesting to see how tomorrow goes but I think the scenery videos will get another play through and I will probably start at the same 7 mph pace.  I may force myself to take more regular walking breaks though just to keep the energy levels up.  I want to shoot for a 3:00 to 3:10 time for the 20 miles.  It should be possible but we will see what happens!