I have been training on my treadmill for the last three or four weeks, running as many as 10 miles a day. I have left the incline of the treadmill set to 4% after having read this make the treadmill run closer to running on the road. Today I decided to actually run outside on an actual road. My wife works about 5.3 miles away (according to Mapquest), and I decided to walk to her work, and ride home with her. She was supposed to get out of work at 6pm, so I left home shortly before 4:30pm. I did a brisk walk for the first half mile, to warm up, and then began to jog. I took it easy, trying to keep my heart rate below 150 (70% Karvonen method). I had my mp3 player loaded with an audio book version that I had made of Dean Karnazes’ book Ultramarathon Man. I also had a fanny pack with a couple 16oz bottles of water. I arrived at her work about 5:30. I made a better time than I had expected. Apparently I was going about 5mph. I have a hard time going that fast on my treadmill and keeping my heart rate down. I am scheduled to run 12 miles tomorrow. So I made do the warm up on my treadmill, run to her work, grab a quick lunch, then run home, and do a cool down on my treadmill. My warm ups and cool downs tend to be about half a mile. I may run a little extra to bring the mileage up. I was expecting that running on the road would be harder than the treadmill, but not really. It was nice.

Posted by Rob in Running on September 9th, 2006 |