Rolling Hills

I've been on the treadmill the past TWO days in a row! If you realize that I haven't ran for 18 days before that, I deserve a (small) standing ovation - or a kick in the pants. Plus, yesterday I also did about 15-20 mins of weights & abs. While my arms aren't to sore, I can feel my abs! Yeah, I still have abs - the fat hasn't swallowed them up! I decided to actually do weights after seeing my upper arms (the fat bulges above my elbows that are hiding my triceps) in the mirror after using the treadmill. I thought it was a vast improvment over thinking about doing weights.

I've decided to break away from what is "safe" and try out a new program on the treadmill called rolling hills. Despite it's name there is no change in incline, just speed. I heard a rumor that if you want to improve your pace you need to mix it up. So I'm mixing it up.

Rolling hills starts off at a painfully slow walk for two minutes and then a little bit faster for another two minutes. Then the fun begins. Every thirty seconds the miles per hour increase by .5 until you reach your peak, and then it goes back down in thirty second increments. For me, that's starting at 4.0 miles per hour (15 minute mile) - up to 6.0 miles per hour (10 minute mile) and back down to 4.0 miles per hour until you run out of time, which is whatever you've set it to be. Then with 4 minutes to go, it automatically does a cool down.

Since I'm only on Day Two, I have no opinion on how it's working to improve my pace, but the "change of scenery" is nice.

We have the last Reese race next weekend, so I'm going to try to rollling hill it as much as I can between now and then and maybe see a slight difference with my race results.

Stay tuned.