very snowy day = treadmill time!

At least we knew it was coming. There's about 4 inches (10 cm) of snow on the ground here right now at our house, and a bit more at the track & at the gym (higher elevation). There's not much on our sidewalks because it isn't all that cold (30F, -0.8C), so I did drive by the track to check & see if maybe it would be possible to work out outside. No dice...the track was covered in snow. I didn't bother to look at how much, because workout quality would be diminished with the snow out there. I'd do a recovery/easy day in the snow, but not a quality workout like I was to do today.

So, off to the gym I went. Yes, I do have a treadmill at home which I can use, but my husband had to go to work really early today and I wanted him to get as much sleep as possible before he had to go in. The treadmill isn't terribly noisy, but it just seemed better to go to the gym. I warmed up for 10 minutes (0.85 miles - walked very easy to start while fussing with my iPod), did some flexibility drills, and then started the hard workout.

I was to do 2k/2k/1k/1k at 85% effort with 3 min rest in between. Treadmills are all calibrated a bit differently (bummer!), but I picked one that I thought was fairly accurate based on previous experience. It was close enough :). You get a little advantage from the treadmill, in general, due to no wind resistance and also due to a little assist from the belt with each stride (however, on my home treadmill, which is not calibrated right, I am usually slower than outside with equivalent effort). The treadmill today at the gym seemed easier. I did the first 2k (1.24 miles) in 11:40 with ave HR 158/max HR 164 (treadmill speed 6.5 mph to start but pretty quickly moved it down to 6.3 mph). That was faster than on the track last week, but who knows if it was really faster. The important thing was the effort, which felt pretty hard and was reasonably close to 85%. The second 2k I did have to slow down a bit and set the treadmill to 6.2 mph (10 kph), which is where I kept it the rest of the workout. The second 2k was in 12:00. The first 1K I did in 6:00 and the last 1K in 6:03 (should have been 6:00 based on 10 kph, but something got a little off with the lap timing or something).

My legs were tired, but not as tired as they were last week at the track. That's good I guess. Today's workout felt pretty good. It was hard, and I was sweating a lot, but I was able to focus on a light on the wall and felt like I was really concentrating well on my form and my effort. I felt focused and strong, which is good. I needed a little confidence.

My foot? One small twinge at one point but no other problems. I'm icing it as I write this and hoping for the best. I do have PT appointment later today which is sure to make things more interesting, but I think the foot is fine for now. I'll see how it feels later this morning and then will let the PT know how hard to work me :).

Oh, and yesterday? I had an "optional" day on the schedule, so I did some stationary bike & elliptical for an hour, along with some PT exercises and some hip abductor exercises. Should have done some abs too, but was pressed for time.

OK, time to shower and get the kids ready so I can go to work. Thankfully, the roads are relatively clear so it shouldn't be too much of a problem.