Hump Day and The Treadmill

The weather has sure changed here this week, with Autumnal Storms having kicked in. I was awoken at 4 this morning with Thunderclaps that shook the house (at least that is how they felt), and rain bouncing around outside. Thankfully it had stopped by the time I got up, but the skies were as dark at 9 than they would be at 7 other days. Heavily leadend with rain, and so, I decided to head to the gym and the Treadmill.

Many years ago, back in the 1990's, when I was almost a decent runner, I used to do a lot of training on the Treadmill, due to long working hours, and living in the countryside where there were few street lights for winter running Monday to Friday. I actually used to enjoy the regular runs, switching from Interval Training, to Tempo Runs, even enjoying (if that is the right word) the long runs of 10 miles plus on the machines. Mind you, I was running at under 7 minute mile pace in those days, even kicking out sub 6 minute Mile Intervals at times.

These days, it's a different story. Obviously age has caught up with me a little, :) but I still feel frustrated I can't bang out a 5 Mile treadmill run in under 35 minutes (I haven't done that since 2001!). To be honest I haven't run under 39 minutes since 2006, not that I run on Treadmills quite as much now, but my On-Line Running Diary shows my runs over the years, and I can see at a glance how slow I have become.

But today, I was looking at only 4 km, and a Tempo run, starting at the sedate pace of 10.5kph, roughly a tad over 9 minute pace per mile, and notching things up a click every 500m. The first couple of kilometres were easy enough, but the last 500m was actually a stuggle, and relistically it wasn't that fast that it should have been, so I was disappointed to clock 22:12 for the 4km, feeling deflated at the slow time, given how I was feeling.

Maybe it's simply because it's Hump day, and I was feeling the hump!, let's hope, as I have been feeling good for the last few weeks, genuinely feeling that progress was being made. I'll just have to keep working at it, and work a little harder to get the times down, and the distance longer, and maybe not feel quite as crap at the end. We'll see....