Survivor: Treadmill Island

The wicked arctic temperatures continue here in Calgary. I was supposed to have my final long run on the schedule but it was just too cold to attempt it outdoors and way too long to attempt it indoors. Coach reworked my schedule and I now had 10 km to run on Saturday and a 2 hour marathon race pace interval run for Sunday. I've never spent more than about 35 minutes on a treadmill so this was definitely going to be one exercise in treadmill survival. The question would be weather I could outwit, outplay and outlast the treadmill?
Saturday:

I slept in a bit on Saturday but was still at the gym at about 9:30 since I had somewhere to be by noon. I started off with my 10 km run on the treadmill which quickly was bargained down in to a 6 mile run. Even though there is supposed to be a 30 minute time limit on the cardio machines I was able to plug in a desired workout time of 65 minutes. I started on my merry way. I tried to focus on the music on my iPod, tried to think of anything except for the fact that I was like a little hamster running and running and going nowhere, but the time just dragged by. I hopped off after my 6 miles were up and quickly changed into my swimsuit and hit the pool. If you are looking for a time to bask in the quietness around the pool and just bust out some laps...Saturday morning is not the day to do it. There was only one lane open for lane swimming and the rest of the pool was dedicated to lessons for kids or other kids horsing around. Even with only one lane open there were only three of us swimming for most of the time so I was able to crank my laps out. I had hoped to get 2400 m in but it was going to be a stretch to make it so I decided to cut back to 2000 m. I was on my final 400 m set before a 200 m cool down and I was kicking with flippers on. All of a sudden my left calf seized up. I couldn't kick with my left leg anymore, but thank goodness for the flippers because I just kicked with my right leg to get me back to the other end of the pool. I stopped and stretched it out. Obviously it wasn't enough because half way through the next length it seized up again. Once again I kicked with my right leg down to the end and stopped to stretch. I abandoned the flippers and just decided to finish out with a pull buoy since crossing my ankles would keep my left calf in a stretch. Just at the end my right calf seized and I was so frustrated...and in so much pain! On every stroke I was pretty well just shouting expletives in my head. Thank goodness I was at 2000 m...I was done!

Sunday:

On Sunday there was no alarm, I just let my body wake up when it wanted to. Which was somewhere just after 10 am. Unfortunately I stumbled out of bed feeling like I had a tennis ball in each calf after yesterday's cramping in the pool incident though. I had stuff I needed to accomplish around the house and finally made it out to the Y just before 3 pm. Since this was going to be a fairly long run I hauled some nutrition along with me. This week I got a great little stocking stuffer in the mail from the wonderful folks at nuun that I couldn't wait to try out. They sent me some u to try out, and I had my choice between tangerine ginger, goji berry green tea and lemon chai. I went with the lemon chai and brought along a lemon sublime Gu to go with it.

Since this was going to be a two hour run in warm temperatures (inside) I figured this would be a good opportunity to try out my marathon race outfit. It is going to be great for running down in Disney World, but I felt a bit goofy looking at the Y... Oh well! I realized that once I got there I had forgotten to bring any Body Glide along. Gulp!

Outwit:

Yesterday I had no problems plugging in a 65 minute run, but the first treadmill I jumped on wouldn't accept anything more than a 30 minute run. Luckily yesterday's treadmill was open so I moved over and lo and behold, it took a 120 minute workout like a charm!

Outplay:

My workout called for a 2 hour run, with 3 x 20:00 at marathon race pace with 10:00 aerobic running between race pace efforts. About 15 minutes in I had to hit the bathroom. I tried to wait it out, but there was going to be no way I was going to last the full two hours. I made it to 30 minutes, hit pause and hoped that my bottle of nuun and my Gu would be enough to hold my treadmill... Ultimately I think taking that quick break at 30 minutes in helped me to break the workout up a bit. I was feeling pretty good on the intervals and my heart rate climbed nicely through zone 3 and into zone 4 throughout them. Having these different chunks of workouts also helped to break the run up so the 2 hours didn't seem like near the drag I was expecting it to be.

Outlast:

There was a bit of a question as to whether the skin on the inside of my thighs would outlast my two hour run. Seriously...must not forget Body Glide in the future... Surprisingly enough it hurt less when I was running fast then when I was running slow. Thankfully the calves held up during the run, but the left one was pretty tight after I was done. And yes...I finished 2 hours on the treadmill! I couldn't believe it, I outlasted every other treadmill opponent and won...!!