Tales from the treadmill - the good, bad and the smelly

OK, so it's a gloomy rainy day here in the dirty Jerz. I was supposed to be busy all day with something but when it fell thru, I found an opportunity to get a little running in.

With my crummy mood matching the weather, I headed to the gym. Run it out.

I've recently decided after being disappointed with the three hours it took for me to run my last 1/2 that I would really start focusing on speed, by consistently pushing myself to run shorter distances in my runs for now (2-4 miles) and focus on upping the speed - Great. I figure once I can run for 3-4 miles comfortably at a consistent 5.0 - 5.4, I'll start to increase distance again. I think that's a good strategy? If you have advice throw it out there, tho.  Still not winning any marathons at that pace but I'm chipping away.

Today I planned to run for 3 miles but as soon as I started running, I realized that my favorite pair of running pants are now suddenly too big - I kind of saw it coming, they've been starting to feel a little loose but today they turned the corner into unwearable. I guess that's good news, but not when you figure it out mid-sprint. It's really not fun or comfortable to run and try to hold your pants up at the same time. They are kind of like yoga pants  so there's no draw string or anything. They just kept sliding down, uncomfortably - putting a damper on things - but I continued to run at good speeds - at some points as fast as 6.5. no one was in the gym and i had on a baggy t shirt (from my first 5K as a matter of fact!) so I was going to just deal.

I still had my sights set on 3 miles and then the final nail in the coffin arrived. A big (I'm sorry) smelly guy in his tin foil/garbage bag work out "sweat inducing" outfit decided to park his ugly butt on the machine right next to me we were thisclosetogether.  Did I mention, no one else was in the gym? 47 machines to choose from and he's on the machine next to me. BOOOOO. BOOOOO. BOOOO.

In the words of the illustrious Ludacris, "Why you all up in my grill?"

Anyhoo, this was about 1.5 in, the pants were killing me, he was suffocating me and I'd had enough. I cranked up the machine to as fast as I could go back to 6.5 or so and ran the last half mile.

So the good news is, my final time was 2 miles in 22:20 (11:10 mile!) which is really phenomenal for me. Even at that short distance. I'm very happy about that. Nope not comfortable and if I had to do the last mile I wouldn't have sustained that pace but I do feel happy that I'm taking the steps to get faster... even if my motivation is to get off the treadmill asap to get new pants and away from smelly neighbors.

XO
Jen