Running on a treadmill

Now I'm the first to admit I loathe running on a treadmill but treadmill running can have its benefits.

As an example, last night as part of my recover I decided I would jog on a treadmill as I wanted to run at a much slower speed than I would normally if I were running outside. Of course you have to put up with staring at a blank wall or if your lucky a 50inc plasma tv, however you get to run at the exact speed you wish to, which for me was 5.30min/km. I managed 30 minutes with no knee pain and then I decided I would run home which took around 10 minutes.

Treadmill running is much lower impace that running on a pavement or a road so in theory this should help aid recovery (well rest is the best option but as we all know what runner wants to ever go down that path!!). To mimic running outside the incline on the treadmill should be set to 1% which isnt all that noticeable.

Once I arrived home I got my foam roller out and applied some deep muscle massage to loosen up my ITB for good measure.

Today I plan on running round Centennial Park near my work. Its a nice decent loop with plenty of variation and trails, I just hope my ITB holds up.

As it will be dark I will be taking my trusty Petzl Tikka Plus 2 head torch. The headlamp lights the way superbly and I barely notice it on my head.

My other value peice of equipment is my Garmin Forerunner 405cx gps watch. If im outside I generally do not run anywhere without this beauty. Highly accurate with plenty of features its a great piece of kit. I love downloading my data after a long run and looking back to see how far i've run, how fast, me heart rate, how many calories ive burnt and where ive been.

The battery life is supposedly 8hrs and when I first bought this (before I had even heard of ultrarunning) I laughed and thought I would never even run close to 8hrs. How wrong I was .......

However, there are pieces of kit out there that, portable usb chargers, that enable you to charge your watch on the run but I'll talk more about that in a later post.

Happy running