Happy Tuesday! I’m a bit late on today’s post, but I promise I was actually busy and completely forgot about it until right now! How’s your Tuesday going?!? I started off my day with 8 x 800s after hitting snooze one too many times and have the first day of Learn to Skate classes later today! It was actually warm out this morning which was really nice (50*) change and it also made me seriously SWEAT big time by those last few reps.

Our track is still under construction, so I went to the flat section of my road and got it done. 6.77 miles later —> done!

Thinking of all who were personally impacted by 9.11 and thank you to all who serve our country to make it safe. I cannot believe it’s been 17 years since the attacks. It feels like just yesterday when I was huddled in my 6th grade homeroom watching the news and trying to make sense of all that was happening.

Since Winter and cooler temperatures are coming, I wanted to share with you some tips that help me get through really difficult treadmill runs (whether it’s an easy OR hard run day- mentally sometimes the easy ones are the most challenging for me)!

• Break up your run into sections. Maybe you’re planning on doing a 10 mile run —> break it up into 5 x 2 mile sections and either plan to get a drink of water or reset the treadmill after each set. OR break it up time-wise: go for 10 or 20 or 30 minutes straight, reset the treadmill, then do another one.

• Vary your incline every 2-3 minutes. I really love to do this on longer times on the treadmill. I get to work on my form and find that it does REALLY help me when I’m on the hills outside.

• Vary your pace every 5 minutes. I love me a good treadmill ladder. I’ll start out at a really easy 5.7 mph pace then bump it up by 0.2 every 5 minutes until I get to 6.5 mph and then work my way back down to 5.7 mph

• Try watching a show or listening to a podcast. I’m so spoiled at our gym because we get DirecTV (we don’t even have that at home), so I love to scroll through the channels and find something that I normally never get to see!

• Put a movie on for a long run. When training for MS Run The US, I was all about Disney movies. I would pop one on and just let the run go (never looking at the distance/time).

• Tell yourself that you can get to x amount of minutes and then pop on a good show! I would sometimes run for 30 minutes and then ‘reward’ myself with popping on Gilmore Girls for the last 30 minutes of my run.

I’d love to hear some of your favorite treadmill tips! How do you pass the time?!?

Where were you on 9/11/01?

Temperatures where you are right now?