Wednesday, May 12, 2010

A Pseudo Hill Run


It wasn’t like the lung busting, quad burning, 13% or so uphill grade of Skyline Drive, or Stanley Avenue, or the shorter but steeper Hill Street. Those of course are streets in the city of Signal Hill. What I did was more like an undulating 3 to 8% grade depending on the speed of the treadmill belt. I’m talking about what turned out to be a good one hour treadmill workout I did Tuesday morning with variable speeds and hills. During the slower segments, I would raise the angle higher, while on the faster portions, I take it down to 3 or 4%. The reason why I did a treadmill run was because I wimped out from running outdoors when I saw and felt how cold and windy it was that day.
My right inner ankle was hurting more than usual after the workout because running hills don’t agree with the posterior tibialis and Achilles tendons when they are already injured. In fact, hill workouts are supposed to be avoided.
One thing I don’t pay too much attention to on the treadmill is the speed (MPH) that the console tells me, because for some reason, my perceived effort translates to a faster pace when running outdoors than on the treadmill. For example, on a good day outdoors, I may average 6.5 MPH. With a similar perceived effort on the treadmill, I can only do 5 to 5.5 MPH. I don’t know why that is. Perhaps because I set the upwards angle to at least 3%. Another thing I don’t look at is the total miles on the machine and I just rely on the amount of time I spend running.
             In any case, it was a good workout because I tried something different. It consisted of increasing and decreasing speed ladder intervals in which I changed the uphill angles manually. When I checked my logs afterwards, I was surprised to see that it had been exactly two months since I last used the treadmill. Probably about the same time I acquired the elliptical trainer.

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