I Killed A Treadmill

I done did it up yesterday. I killed a treadmill. And it felt GOOD! I needed a mental boost and that did it.

I have a race coming up on September 1, the Pocatello Marathon. 11 days, not that I’m counting. I need a Boston Qualifier, which for me is a sub-3:10. I’ve run Boston the past five years and I want to make it six in a row. I love running that race. But Pocatello is my only shot at getting back next year. Registration opens in September and I won’t get another shot at a marathon before it closes.

I knew I had a lot of work ahead of me after I only went 3:19 on June 9 in the Utah Valley Marathon. It was my now-or-never time. After I spent the better part of a week letting a strained hamstring recover from that race, I averaged about 100 miles a week over the next seven weeks. I had something like 10 20+ mile runs, three or four runs between 26.2 and 30 miles, about another dozen or so days where I ran at least 20 miles total by running twice, plus a high-mileage week of 130 miles.

I lost a dozen pounds and am currently about eight pounds less than I’ve ever been while running a marathon. I’ve done all this running at altitude (my house is at 5,470 feet) and I’ve done some fairly hard running on the treadmill just to get the lungs burning and the wheels turning. I’m pretty sure I’m in the best shape of my life, and I’ve had moments over the past week when I wanted to start getting excited about the race. I need to be physically ready, and I’m very close and a good taper will take care of that. But I need to be mentally, too. As recently as yesterday morning, I wondered when would be too soon to start getting fired up. I don’t want to get revved up too early and then burn out, but I also want to be locked in and in a zone when I toe the starting line a week from this Saturday.

Well, I got my green light last night after work at the gym.

When I leave work, I always ask my wife if it’s OK to go to the gym. There’s a gym right across the street from my work and if I go for 40 minutes, my commute home drops from about 35 minutes to 20-25 minutes because traffic eases. Yesterday, she gave me the go-ahead, so I went. I was thinking about doing a progressive, where I start slow and gradually push the pace, but I wanted to run some fairly fast miles (well, fast for me). So I decided I’d warm up with 0.75 miles, then run 3 miles fast, cool down for 1/4 mile and call it a workout.

So, I got going and bumped it up gradually every 0.15 miles during my warmup. 7.3, 7.4, 7.5, 7.6, 7.7. Legs started to get warm and it was go time.

9.2 for the first quick mile, 6:31. Felt good. It didn’t even feel hard. I was getting into a zone. Something smelled a little funny, like a motor burning. The belt on the treadmill was slipping a little bit, but I kept rolling.

9.3 for the next mile, 6:27. Felt good. Same as the first mile. Mentally, I was doing well. Same burning smell, same slipping belt. But I felt good. I kept rolling.

9.4 for the final fast mile, 6:22. This felt like a perfect pace. Felt like I was moving, felt like I was getting a workout, but it didn’t feel like I was overdoing it. Still smelled the burning and felt the slipping. And then I just decided I’d crank it up and run a fourth mile.

So, before I finished that mile, I cranked up the speed. 9.5, 6:18 per mile. Feeling good. 9.6, 6:15 per mile. Burning. Slipping. Feeling good. Moving well. High-stepping. Tapping my toe on the belt. I was in a groove and having a great time.

And then, BAM! It stopped! The belt wasn’t moving. I’d run about 4.45 miles at that point and the treadmill was dead. It wouldn’t turn on. It felt so awesome! Take that, you treadmill! I worked harder than you this summer, so I won this battle!

I don’t know why, but it’s fun to burn out a treadmill like that. My membership pays for the occasional repair, right? Well that was the confidence booster I needed. That was the exclamation point on a long, hot summer of training in oxygen-free Colorado.

September 1, Pocatello, Idaho. I’ll be there. I’ll be ready. Just ask that poor treadmill![subscribe2]