From NR: Treadmill?!

Today I experienced something that I don't think I've ever encountered before . . .

I wanted to run on the treadmill. It was beautiful outside and I did my easy 3 miles inside. On a treadmill. Voluntarily.

I know. What's wrong with me, huh?

Actually, I think it was part making sure I could stop if my knee was pissed and part not wanting to run up Chester today with the un-eveness and not knowing where 3 miles was at. It ended up being fairly nice, though. Sometimes it's good to force myself through a treadmill since it's much harder for me than it should be.

So something else that was new for me - I went to an official yoga class for the first time on Saturday. My sister goes every Saturday and since I was visiting her for the weekend, I got to go along. It was actually really nice. It was two hours long and I didn't even notice, I thought it was more like one hour. Turns out yoga is not so good for my knee though - lots of kneeling and I think too much twisting the leg out and holding. The kneeling I knew was a problem right away and made sure to kneel on a blanket and try to kneel uneven, keeping less weight on my left knee but I didn't really think about the twisting at all. So my knee was rather unhappy with me the next morning. Which axes my plans to check out yoga classes at the Fitness Center. I did look back into Pilates, though, and am annoyed to only find a morning class. Maybe there'll be a different schedule come fall.

So once my knee made some noise, I opted for being smart (yay, Sam!) and took a few days off to make sure it wouldn't freak out on me too much. My knee being unhappy could also be partially due to a jump in mileage I may have just done, too . . . I went for a test run yesterday and things seemed pretty good so I decided on a short run today, tomorrow off and go back to my scheduled long run on Saturday.

From NR: How 3 miles turned into 4.5

Happy news - I get to run 4 times this week! Things are looking hopefully for at least running the Half Marathon at Eau Claire. Presuming they let me drop down. My long run this week will be 8 miles, I think.

So I ran on a treadmill Friday (ew) and was planning on doing 3 miles since I did 6 on Wednesday. So I'm going along with my music - I definitely try to bring my iPod along for treadmill runs, it makes them so much more do-able - when not a couple minutes in, I jerk the cord and iPod goes flying off the end of the treadmill. Oops. So I stop, pick it up, jigger the cord under my shirt to avoid getting caught again and continue on my way. A few minutes later, I realize I never restarted my watch. Nargh. Okay, so the treadmill is going to say 3 miles before I've actually DONE 3 miles since I let it run until it hits the speed I want and then I jump on. It's not that big of a difference, really, but I like to know, via my watch, what the time discrepancy is. Hm. Okay, I'll play it on the safe side and run a full minute after the treadmill hits 3 miles. Good plan!

So I'm going along on my merry way, upping the pace from time to time (hitting just under 8 min/mile pace at 2.5 miles!), when I hit 3 miles. Okay, just a bit more and then I'm done. Except the next time I look it's something like 3.7 miles. Might as well just do 4 miles! Especially since treadmill time is usually horrific for me, so it's nice for it to go by more or less easily, for once.

Well, just before 4, my iPod keeps shooting out slow songs. I go through shuffle right now so I need to make a playlist for just good runnable songs, I guess. So I'm hitting next, next, next and nothing good is coming up. Then I decide I really want to end with some Mindless Self Indulgence since it reminds me of my first Ragnar :) So I start searching for it and by the time I find it, I'm around 4 miles but I really want to run this song so I might as well just do 4.5, right? Of course!