In the winter I like to run indoors once a week but I don’t like treadmills. Our local indoor walking/running track requires 4.4 laps per kilometer, which means 10 km is 44 laps. I like to do 50 laps though which is approximately 11.36 km.
I’ve been doing this every winter for a while now and I’ve discovered that there is no way I can keep count of that many laps. Oh sure, it’s all fun and games for the first few laps, and easy to keep count, but after the oxygen deprivation sets in and your brain starts to wander, it’s too easy to lose track. You begin to wonder if that was lap 27 or 25. No really, you do! The easy solution I found is to carry one of those small stock counters looped around one of my fingers. Every time I run past that water cooler that marks one lap, I just click the button and voila, one lap recorded.
I use the outside track of the three tracks, while slower walkers use the inside ones. There are a lot of seniors, kids, and others who don’t really understand or care about not taking up the whole track as they plod along (in spite of the signs saying not to walk more than two abreast). But I don’t mind since it is easy enough to go around them anyway, and I love the fact that at least they are out there doing something!
And at this time of year, there seems to be a lot of resolution makers who appear, but that crowd gradually thins and disappears as time goes on. You have the regular seniors who come often just to walk, you have mothers with their baby strollers also using the track, and you have athletes (mostly students of high school age) who run very fast for a lap or two, then they run down stairs two flights of stairs and come back up again. There are many types of people using the track many ways. The only thing that sort of bugs me about the track is that they have me always running in an anticlockwise direction. They reverse directions on other days, but it’s Wednesday when I go and I just wish I could run the other direction for a change!
They also have overhead speakers where you can listen to radio music. The track itself is fairly cushy and I always run faster on it than on the road.
I use this indoor running day to do speed work; that is a really quick run at race pace in an effort to beat the 10 km hour mark. I’ve never been able to do it yet, but my best time is 1 hour and 3 minutes and change. Usually I run it around 1:09 or so.
Anyway, the weekly speed run is an integral part of my marathon training which I will run May 2nd. So Sunday is my long run (next one is 14 km), Wednesday is my indoor speed run, and Friday is a 12 km tempo run, not at race pace but just at a comfortable level for me.
Monday is a rest day, so is Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, except that I do cross training on Tuesdays and Saturdays.
The cross training is 2 hours with a short break at the hour mark and is karate which is quite intense if you are a runner because of the amount of leg work involved. Still, I like it for the total mind and body workout which trains you to recruit more muscle and to increase your balance and motor coordination.
I can do intense workouts on treadmills if it involves short distance of less than 5 km (much less, ha ha) and I have the track steeply inclined for a hill type workout. I could like it more if there was someone running with me on a treadmill beside mine, like they have in the fitness centers. That way, old slow me could still run with the faster folk and have a chat at the same time. I think I’d like that.
Finally, the indoor track is an intense and difficult speed workout for me so it is good that I can – in the same building – go for a swim after and a dip in the massaging jets of the hot tubs.
Tomorrow is a good day. I can hardly wait!
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