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whatshouldwecallme:

Channeling your inner squirrel: Tips for treadmill workouts

I know the title is a bit confusing, but hear me out.

Squirrels are pretty fit, right? Always climbing up trees, chasing each other around, nut scouting… mating. They also happen to be cute. That’s the goal for your workouts right, to be fit, or cute, or both? That’s my goal anyway! If you wish to liken yourself to a rat, guinea pig, hamster (they are evil!!!), etc. you can. Just channel your inner spaz.

Well whenever I get on the treadmill I imagine myself as a squirrel at a circus next to a kid who just dropped his bag of peanuts—so much to do, so hard to stay focused! Do I want to do incline? Speed? Both? SO MANY NUTS TO GET, SO LITTLE ENERGY!!!

I trained and completed a marathon by channeling my short attention span to work in my favor, mostly running on a treadmill with some long runs dedicated to the outdoors. BUT, since I live in the hood of LA, running outdoors sucking in all that smog felt pretty counterproductive. Though I did increase my agility by dodging rapists, gunshots, and muggers. 

SO… TIPS FOR THE DREADED TREADMILL:

• If you are tired, walk or for 10 minutes at a 12 - 15 min/mile pace. This will get your blood flowing and energy up
• If you are sort-of tired, try to jog a mile before beginning your run
• COVER THE CLOCK once you set your pace if you are training for endurance! Put a magazine over the numbers and only check it every once in a while—every 5 songs or so on your ipod, it will make the workout go by much faster
• Bananas help cramps
• If you are having a bad day, don’t fret! Some days I’ll run 10 miles and it’ll feel like 1. Some days I’ll run a lap and want to die D: blame it on the music/not enough sleep/your mood and move on. At least you got out there!
• If your cramps are very painful, jog slowly at a very high incline—you’ll still be working out very hard, but the cramps will not be as severe
• Don’t hold onto the handle bars! It feels easier when you do that because you aren’t working out as hard when you do that :P
• treat your body like a toddler. You need to discipline and train it because if you’re running, it will take you to evil mental places… like how you should get off the treadmill and go to donut land instead. Punish the toddler! NO, NO DONUTS!!! But if the toddler (your body) is bleeding/in really bad shape then you should probably listen to it. Find the difference between “this hurts cause I’m out of shape/pushing myself” and “I think I just broke my ankle.” You know best, even if your body is screaming DONUTSSS!!!
• If you are training for speed/running just to get in shape with no end goal, there are a lot of “treadmill games” you can play…

Which leads me to… TREADMILL GAMES I will write this assuming you can run a 10 minute mile for three miles consistently, scale it to what your target mile is—or if you’re not at a 10 minute mile yet, scale it back. 10 is a really easy number to play the games with though (I personally play all my games with a 7/8 minute mile average depending on how hungover I am though.) 

Game 1: BEAT DA CLOCK! 

• Once you walked/jogged a warm up, restart your treadmill and set everything to 0. This is a good game if you get bored or tired easily. Start out running a 10 minute/mile pace (6.0 I believe) (again, scale back if you’re not here yet or scale forward if you are). The goal is that once you are at 1 mile, you must be at 10:00 minutes on the clock or less… so keep the pace. You can just stay at 6.0 the whole time but that wouldn’t be a GAME >:D 
  
  What you want to do is SPRINT for like, a song, a minute, .25 miles, .5 miles, whatever you choose… and see how fast you can go. Then once you’ve tired out, you can slow jog or go back to your original average. The point is you’re always watching the clock to make sure that on AVERAGE you’re not doing less than a 10 minute/mile. Also you want to try and see how much time you have left at the end, and those are points! 
  
  So if you are playing the game with 10 minutes/mile for 3 miles, you have 30 minutes to complete the whole run. If you finish at 29 minutes, or 28, you got points :D Every time you go on the treadmill, you want to see how many “points” you can get. Then once you feel ready, or hit 27 minutes for the game, you can make your average 27 minutes for 3 miles (9 minutes a mile) and progress like that. 

Work those cheeks

Pick a number between .01 and 1. You picked .25? That’s a great number. That’s one lap around the track. This game is really easy, and it involves sweating like Winnie the Pooh in a pilates class.

• Pick an amount you want to run — I’ll play with 3 miles. 
• Every lap, boost your incline 1%, and boost your running speed (so if you want to be running a 10 min mile, start at 6.0, then go to 6.1 … then 6.2… by .1 (or however much you want)
• Do this for 6 laps if you are running 3 miles. 
• You will probably/should be pretty sweaty and tired at the 1/2 mark of your workout. You will probably want to quit? Or you definitely should want so quit!!!
• at the halfway mark of your workout, you can make a decision… you can decrease your workout either by incline, or by speed—but only one, and only one point. This is fun because if you think that running slower will be easier, you’ll be like OMG!!! WHY DIDN’T I PICK THE INCLINE MY CHEEKS ARE ON FIREEE!!! and if you pick the incline you’ll be like WHY DIDN’T I PICK SPEED I JUST GAVE MYSELF ASTHMA!!!
• At the end you’ll feel awesome!
• And if you’re more advanced, you can choose to stay the same at either incline or speed, or go down in one and up in the other! 

OK well that’s all for my very confusing advice! Basically the trick to beating boredom on a treadmill is to make a game out of it and beat your personal records :)

& the calories that it says you burn are always a lie! The reporting industry isn’t regulated, and its proven that people choose the machines that claim they burned more calories even though the people did the exact same workout… so yeah, sorry to burst that bubble :P

I’m doing it!!!

I’m all lined up to leave in January 2013 to backpack until

• August 2013: before I start law school
• Until I run out of money

(which ever comes first)

I’m working my butt off this summer with 50 hours a week, and going to get trained as a bartender to make some extra cash on the side! Living with my mom to cut rent, and then I have another semester at USC before I go!

I think my strategy is just going to be flying into Spain as my first destination, and just simply stemming out from there! I’m really nervous because I’ll be alone for the most part, but I’m very excited as well. It’ll be strange having no structure and being able to do whatever I want, whenever I want!

Who knows, maybe I’ll even meet a nice foreign boy? That’s exactly what my dad is scared of though! He fears that I’ll leave for Europe and never come back :P I highly doubt that would ever happen—I love San Diego too much to settle down for good anywhere else.

Craziness!