5k Hill Treadmill Workout, and more i2workout fun

Today it was sunny and 70 degrees. I REALLY, REALLY wanted to go out for a bike ride. However, I was commited to staying home for family reasons, so an indoor workout was my plan for the day. I thought about riding the bike trainer, but dismissed that idea, as I just couldn’t bear riding indoors when it was such pretty weather outdoors!

I started out by doing my stability ball core workout, something I do twice a week now. That doesn’t really burn any calories, so…I then moved onto the treadmill. (Thanks to all who are concerned about my calorie intake. I have made a note to ask my coach about it. I ate 1400 calories today and do not feel the least bit hungry right now at 8:36pm. ).

I googled “treadmill hill workouts” and found this site that has some neat treadmill workout ideas. The 5k hill workout appealed to me, so I duplicated it in my i2workout program (see chart at end of post for details). It was difficult, but enjoyable, if that makes sense. One thing, tho, is that it’s way too hot running on the treadmill unless there is cold air blowing at me through the open windows. Seventy degrees outside just doesn’t cut it for cooling purposes! Conclusion: I need to get a really good fan.

Other running updates:

I did another treadmill running HR test last week. I created an i2workout file for the test. That worked out great…all I had to do was hit the lap timer on my HR watch each time the program delivered a beep code to my treadmill. The result was exactly the same as last time I did it in November. Hmmmm….not sure what that means. Am I training wrong? Am I not getting any better? Have I plateaued or reached my peak?

Immediately after doing the HR test, I did my six mile run to the lake and back. It took me 56 minutes. My PR for that run is 55 minutes. Not bad for just having done some hard treadmill running! During that entire run, I focused on the lift, lift, lift idea I talked about a few days ago. I experimented with leaning just a little to get the feel of gravity working for me. The Pose running book talks about using gravity to work for you. Honestly, the only time I feel gravity working for me is when I run downhill…so this is something I really need to figure out. I also imagined my core was a hard golf ball; not a soft nerf ball. I’m going to shorten all my runs for a month, to give my body a rest, and also to continue focusing on form.

The week before, I did the Cheetah Fast DVD workout on the treadmill. I wanted to bump up my “base pace” to be 3.5 mph, from 3 mph. A decimal number as “base pace” would make it difficult to hit the buttons during each set of the workout, which goes by Base Pace + “x” mph. Thus, setting a speed of 5.5 involves 6 pushes of a button: pressing the 5 button once, then hitting the up arrow button five times. This is cumbersome, so…you guessed it, I designed an i2workout file to go along with the Cheetah Fast DVD! I started the DVD and paused it exactly at the beginning of the workout. Then I started the i2workout program, which has a 10 second delay. As soon as the 10 second countdown was at “1”, I hit the play button on the DVD. It worked like a charm! I could listen to Coach Troy’s motivating instructions on the DVD, without having to worry about hitting any buttons on my treadmill. (The workout I designed was a few seconds off, so I tweaked it a bit for next time I do it.).

These files were created with the i2workout program that is designed to control older ifit.com compatible treadmills. This does not work with the newer ifit SD cards.