What’s this about rediscovering the treadmill? My treadmill certainly hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s right there in my cardio room. That’s what I now call my home gym area. My bike on a trainer and the treadmill are in one room with all my fitness toys. You know, yoga mats, dumb bells, resistance bands.
I recently decided to get back into more of a regimented fitness schedule and try to have something scheduled for every day of the week, even if it’s rest day. Currently, I am going to the gym to meet with a trainer twice a week. I’m going to have to write a separate post about that experience! Those two days are accounted for. Then I added one bike day. Since I started this in January, my bike day is on my indoor bike. Now I added two days of running on the treadmill. It can be a day of intervals or just a steady easy run. I include one day of yoga or some kind of flexibility training and then one day for rest or an easy hike or some other kind of active recovery. That accounts for the whole week.
Today I did a run/walk interval thing with increasing lengths of run time and decreasing lengths of walk time. It felt great. When I first returned to the treadmill, I had a hard time running. So I did a brisk walk on it. I’ve worked myself back to running on it though I’ve noticed that I’m definitely slower than I used to be.
I’ve been avoiding my treadmill yet again so I’m glad to return to it. It’s so easy to skip cardio activities when you’re stuck indoors for days at a time, even though I know I need it.
Searching for my past posts about treadmills on the Becoming Elli site, I discovered a post I wrote a couple of years ago, Renaming the Dreadmill or How to Change Your Attitude. I saw the title and actually thought that Chris wrote it but no, I wrote it! What I wrote it in 2020 inspired me today in 2022. (I don’t know why but I really like that I’d forgotten about this post and when I read it, I felt motivated.)
Because I have my activities scheduled for each day, and I’ve told my boyfriend what those things are, I’m much more likely to complete them. So far, I’ve managed even if I had to switch days around a couple of times. Mainly, I had to move my rest day because something happened that prevented me from doing what I had scheduled. Definitely the schedule is working. At least my commitment to the schedule is working.
I log everything into Strava via Garmin or Zwift. I like seeing the activities adding up in my account. So far I’m enjoying rediscovering the treadmill.
I’ll keep you posted on how this scheduling works over the next few months. What are you doing to keep yourself active? I’d love to hear.