Treadmill run: FAIL

Since the snow is sticking around (for now) (in fact it's been snowing all day today still), I dragged myself out of bed to the Y this morning. After calling to confirm that they were open (yesterday I showed up at 6:30 and they were closed until 9 a.m.!). I thought I might tackle that speed work after all.

I mentioned that it's been years since I've run more than a mile on the treadmill, right? Yes. Still years. Now I guess I should say, "more than half a mile."

I got on the treadmill, finally figured out how to make the headphones for the TV work, and set it on a walk to start. I raised the incline to 1, then 1.5 because it still felt weirdly flat. Walking was okay, though I needed to rest my hands on the rails for balance (foreshadowing, there). I did a minute or so each on 3, 3.5, 4, 4.5. Then I bumped it to 5 (which should be slower than warm-up pace) and started to jog.

It. Was. Awful. Seriously, it was so difficult and awkward. I had to take shorter steps than I think I am accustomed to, it was definitely a forced heel strike (maybe I'm more adapted to midfoot striking than I thought), and of course there was that balance thing. I made myself keep going to the half mile point (that was including the walking at the beginning), then I stopped and made a dash for the elliptical.

I don't know if I could have even handled a level 6 pace (legit warm-up pace), let along the 7-8 that would be called for in the 800 intervals.

It's possible that I could improve with practice, but there was no way that I was going to get those intervals done today.

With all my dallying, plus the time it took to scrape snow off the car and warm it up, I only had time for 35 minutes on the elliptical before heading home.

I feel like this snowy weather is making me lose my will to exercise. All I want to do is hunker down (with my now-working furnace) and eat cookies and soup. Last night I made this Sausage, Bean, and Kale Soup from Cooking Light. (I modified the recipe by adding onions and mushrooms, plus basically doubling it because I had a bigger package of sausage.) I ate it* after doing a 3.1 snowshoe "run." So there was some exercise involved.

Hopefully I will be able to get in some snowshoe time later today as well. I don't know when "real" running can resume. Tomorrow looks pretty dicey as there is a lot of snow, even if it starts melting tonight as promised. (Actually it was supposed to warm up by noon today...not so much.)

I love the snow, I do! But I need to get back to running! I need to want to get back to running!

*Also for lunch today, and planned for dinner and lunch tomorrow.