Yesterday morning, there was actual fog in Anthem.

It's been wetter than I've liked since I got home; the fog burned off quickly yesterday, but then there were showers all day. However, today it's clear and bright again, the way an Arizona winter is supposed to be.

But just because it's dry today doesn't mean that there's not mud out there on the trails; I'm keeping off of the roads (except for short runs) due to my shin splints, so if I can't run on the trails, then I'll run on the dreadmill. (a Dead Runner today was wondering why I was so happy to be back in Arizona where the climate was nicer, if all I was going to do was run on a dreadmill. She wasn't aware that I can't run on roads, and she would have no reason to expect it to be raining here, either).

This morning's run was 16 dreadmiles;  I did two miles of warmup in 17:34,  and then stretched and made sure I had plenty of water, and then did 11.1  miles of negative splits - started out at 7.3 mph and went up 0.1 mph every  3/4s of a mile, until I hit 5 miles of that and then started increasing every mile. I kept this up (with variations near the end) until I had finished a half-marathon (13.1 miles) and then I found myself running my cooldown faster than my warmup, so I used those two miles as part of my half-marathon time trial (1:39:43, for those of you playing along at home).

A run like this causes some folks to wonder WHAT IN THE HECK IS WRONG WITH YOU? HOW CAN YOU RUN SIXTEEN MILES ON A TREADMILL? - the idea being that, if one can go that long without some sort of entertainment or distraction, there must be some sort of mental or emotional disorder.

I don't think that there's anything wrong with me no, wait - of course, there's a lot wrong with me. But I don't believe that being able to run long distances on a treadmill is indicative of some problem. I think that being able to do a thing is more functional than not being able to do that thing.

There are others who wonder how I can do it - like me, they see this as an ability, but they are unable to train themselves to do the same thing. And I don't know how to tell them to do it; I can remember not enjoying treadmill workouts at all, but when I lived in Vermont, it was run on a treadmill, or have various body parts freeze and fall off. Since I don't have any body parts to spare (N.B. - fat doesn't contain much in the way of water; thus, fat will NOT freeze and fall off) I learned how to run on a dreadmill.

But one thing that I have learned is this - the only way to make time pass on a treadmill is to try to beat it.

Dead runner Allen Freeman said today, with respect to running on dreadmills:

"So I end up staring at those numbers clicking over oh-so-slowly on the treadmill and that's pretty much my mental and emotional experience of treadmill running"

That seems to be the usual problem; folks stare at the numbers on the treadmill control panel, and those numbers indicate that what they are doing is going to take them a long time. That can't be any fun; but, as I've said, the only way to make those numbers speed up is to try to outrun them.

My friend Mr. Gladstone asked me once, after I stepped off of a machine after two hours of cardio, how I could stand to do it. Like Allen, it bothered him to watch the numbers - specifically, it bothered him to watch the clock. That's because he was doing his workout based on time; in other words, he was going to be there for something like forty minutes, so he was watching the clock to see when it would be over.

I told him that that was his problem; he was watching the clock to see how quickly he could get it over with. I said "See, I don't do my workouts based on time - instead, I am trying to get as much DISTANCE in as I can. When I'm running a ten miler as fast as I can, then the clock is going TOO fast - I keep thinking that I need more time."

This is the basic difference. It's much like the month of December; for the kids, who are waiting for Christmas, December takes a long time (hence the expression "slow as Christmas"). But for the parents, who are having to get everything done and get everything paid for, December goes by much too quickly. If my intention is to pass the time, then that's going to be where the difficulty is; if my intention is to get as much done as I can during a set time, then I'll be aware that time is passing much too quickly.

I also listen to music while on the treadmill, but it's not "distraction" music; it's music that has a consistent tempo, and it's the tempo at which my I'm running. Using my little MP3 player, I can adjust the tempo to speed up my cadence; thus, I'm not using the music to disassociate from the workout, but to more intensely associate. (I started to use italics in that last word to emphasize the first syllable, to distinguish between dissassociation and association, but it looked vaguely inappropriate :)

If somebody told me that I had to run on a treadmill for two hours, then I think it would start to bother me (I have, BTW, proven to my own satisfaction that a watched pot does, indeed, boil. But it's not a pleasant experience). However, if I'm trying to run as much as I can during those two hours, then my focus isn't on the clock - it's on the odometer, and I'm trying hard to speed up the odometer RELATIVE TO THE CLOCK - that makes the clock run faster. Dangit : )