You want me to what? Get out and run?
It’s that time of year where our pre-dawn skylines are at their most stunning. Really worth getting out there with three layers of clothing and a headlamp.
But sometimes the cold and the dark just feels overwhelming – especially if your Old Goat (aka bodyguard) has opted to run up the mountain in the dark with the dogs. He has very good night vision. I don’t. I am liable to fall into an ant bear hole and he probably won’t hear my distressed bleating.
So, on those mornings, it’s the trusty old treadmill – incidentally the first thing I would save if our house caught alight!
There’s a trick to loving your treadmill. Workouts have to have masses of variety and you have to keep thinking up new things to do. You can’t just set it at an easy speed and go – the minutes will drag.
So here are my new favourites:
To get those fast-twitch muscle fibres fired up – warm up for 10 minutes at an easy pace, then spend 20 minutes doing one minute as fast as you can and then one minute super-slow, walking if need be. Then cool down with 10 minutes easy pace. I find the time really flies by with this one.
For a completely different goal – endurance on mountain trails – warm up with 10 minutes easy. Next, crank the incline up to maximum and power hike for five minutes. Change to zero incline and run at a good clip for five minutes. Then recover for two minutes. Repeat two or three times and then cool down with 10 minutes easy.
You only need two or three treadmill favourites – weekends are most definitely for the road, preferably at dawn.