A Couple Things I've learned about running and treadmills

This morning I woke up feeling somewhat rested but, due to not sleeping so well quite a few nights this week, I just felt rather sluggish and the kind of weird headache I get when I am tired. Since yesterday I was very exhausted after work, my plans to go to the gym were scrapped, along with my hip hop class, therefore, I was fairly determined to go toady and I am SO glad I did! Below are a couple lessons I have learned about running and treadmills that I employed today.

Warm up: I have learned that warming up is, in fact, my friend and not just some annoying time waster keeping me from getting into the good part (the actual run). I have noticed when I ease my way into work outs that I tend to get less headaches and my body 'flows' better (the feeling you get when your blood is moving though your veins and everything in your body is on the same page). Also, I feel less jolted. Seeing as today I felt rather iffy, I did a 5 min walking warm up and ran the last minute at 5.5 and then 6.0 (11 min mile and 10 min mile respectively). This warm up allowed me to check in with my body and see where it was at (because up till that point I thought it was just tired- no more, no less). During and after warming up I could already tell I was feeling good AND it helped me gauge how my knee was doing.
The treadmills at Chuze (sorry Ann I haven't gotten any pictures yet I forget!) allow you to select a 5K run which I selected. I am ecstatic to report that my knee felt FANTASTIC. The best it has felt since I hurt it actually (ooo dare I say that??). I even was running at a steady 11 min mile (keeping the treadmill at 5.5 and higher while only occasionally hitting the 6.0). I also kept the 5k run at the lowest level while manually adjusting the incline.

Incline/Levels That brings me to one more thing I have learned about running (specifically on treadmills). I remember when I first started running on treadmills about 3 or 4 years ago. I'd jack up the speed as much as I could handle and would try to run at at least level 4 (the incline would read sometimes to 4%). I remember getting towards the end of my runs and my legs felt SO heavy and in reality, the treadmill was probably doing most of the work. I do think this lead to over training and abuse on my body (perhaps one of many factors that go into my knee injury) In light of this, I have promised to be more conscious about my treadmill runs and not put the level very high just because I want to show off (or compete with my treadmill neighbor). Thus today the highest my incline got was 2% and that was only twice. Otherwise I hovered between 0 - 1.0%.

I ran a total of 4.6 kilometres, around 2.8 miles and then told myself I need to walk the remainder (another lesson learned; when you're tired, you're tired - don't over do it just to see that exact number pop up on the screen). Felt FANTASTIC!