treadmill tips – Jane Runs Wild

Living in Boston during the holidays, especially Thanksgiving, has always been special. I grew up in a town not far from where the Pilgrims landed and founded Plymouth Plantation, so I can’t think of a better place to be to celebrate this holiday!

One of my favorite places to run in my home town!

Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday to begin with: the time spent with family and friends, the delicious food and dessert we all eat, the non-commercialization of the holiday makes it top of my list. Christmas is a close second, but probably because it extends throughout the entire month of December!

Continue reading “Holidays, Turkey Trots, and Treadmills”

Happy Thursday guys! Thank you so much for checking in to my new blog. I am very excited about it and appreciate any feedback you have.

Boston has had some great weather recently, so I have kept my runs and workouts outside- even in the dark after work-hours. But as I start to train for my next marathon (Phoenix Marathon in February- post coming on that soon!), I am anticipating some treadmill runs in the future as we head into winter. I like to run outside as much as possible, but there are some winter weather days that are simply safer to be inside.

Let’s face it- not all of our outdoor workouts can be met with a gorgeous hot sunset over the Charles River.

Here are a few treadmill tips that I have learned through trial and error over the years:

Dress for warm temps- shorts and tank are recommended for sweaty treadmill runs.
Bring everything you need so it is easily accessible during a run/less tempting to stop. This includes water, GUs/other fuel, headphones, ipod/iphone (to watch movies/listen to music/stream Netflix/text friends that you’re treadmill running in order to make you feel hardcore), and a towel.
As suggested above, bring your iphone/ipad for distraction. I stream the Netflix app on my iphone- might not work for everyone, but it is a great distraction for me. Nothing like binge watching Lost, Sex and the City, or Friday Night Lights to get me through a long treadmill run!
Even though you might have a goal of running “X” miles, play with different speeds or inclines on treadmill- it will also be a good distraction. Note that the incline should normally be set at 1% to simulate outdoor running. I like to mix up my treadmill runs by running 30 seconds to a minute at a certain speed or incline, then increasing this speed or incline in the next 30 seconds, and repeat until you’re running uncomfortably fast. Staying on autopilot mode/never changing things up can make treadmill running boring very quickly.
Treadmills can be handy for hill training- uphill or downhill. A previous marathon I ran, Big Cottonwood Canyon in UT, was a steep downhill course for the first 19 miles (followed by a very unfortunate uphill). Given that I was training in Boston as opposed to the mountains in Utah, I knew that training solely on flat terrain wouldn’t cut it for this race. So I did several runs inside on a treadmill with a downhill decline. This wasn’t an exact replication of the trail, but the constant downhill did help somewhat. The same can go for uphill terrains. Play around with the incline/decline function to mix things up!
Similar to running outside, remember to warm up and stretch appropriately prior to treadmill running. Warm-up can include a few minutes of walking or slow jogging.

Boston sans snow