I had a great run this evening after taking an unscheduled day off yesterday. I needed it. Tonight I ran 7 miles on the roads with 3 miles in the middle at about 7:50 pace. Temperatures in the 20's felt down right balmy after the cold weather we had last week. My legs felt fantastic!
When I came home I calibrated my treadmill. I have been suspecting that it is off by quite a bit. What feels like an easy pace on the roads was feeling fast and difficult on the treadmill. So I found my Daniel's Running Formula (the runner's bible back in the mid to late nineties). I remembered he had a few pages instructing how to calibrate a treadmill. I found the chapter and got out the tape measure, marking tape, calculator, pen and paper, etc. What a process! It involved measuring the belt to the nearest centimeter, timing 10 revolutions while running at a certain pace, and doing the math. I went through the process several times and finally got three consistent results in a row. So what I learned is that when the treadmill says I am running at 7MPH I am actually running at 7.3MPH. I can't believe I put so much time and effort into this tonight. If I heard that someone I knew had done this I'd probably tell him to get a life.
See what is happening? I am becoming one of those number obsessed runners. It starts innocently enough with counting miles and wearing a watch for runs, then before you know it I'm counting how many times a piece of tape passes beneath my feet while I run at a percise pace staring at my stop watch. Next thing you know I will be posting elevation profiles and satelite maps of all my runs.
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