The last week in Running

Last week saw an increase in use of the treadmill and a decrease in motivation. Man, it seems much harder this year to do the runs on the treadmill than it has in past years.

Last Sunday, though, I did get out for my new longest run (well, longest since my long-ago college days when I ran much more than I do now)! I ran a bit over 8.5 miles last Sunday on a nice route around the "big square" as I named the route in my Nike+ web site. I happen to live in an area broken into nicely sized squares, each 1 mile on a side. For a number of years, my "long run" each time I did it was to do the single such square I live next to - a bit over a 4 mile run. Last Sunday, I did the outer perimeter of four of those plus a bit more. It was a great run and I was so happy to be outside!

This Sunday I did my long run on the treadmill and it was a real challenge getting to 7 miles :-(.

I continue to mentally struggle with the odd behavior of my Nike+ on the treadmill - since I calibrated it, it seems that it still tracks about 10-15 seconds / mile slow on the treadmill, though on the other hand it seems like it tracks about 10 seconds fast outside. That means when I'm on the treadmill trying to maintain a pace that I am happy with, I'm probably running about 15-20 seconds faster per mile than I would be to achieve the same feeling outside.

Anyway - last week was another "longest week" for me - 25.96 miles - and my 8th such week in a row (the last time I didn't set a recent personal best for long week was the week just before the Detroit Marathon where I rested toward the end of the week).