Today was INSANE. Thank goodness I wore my SuperWoman costume under my work clothes! 
In my I’m never going to be an Olympian real life., I work for a law firm in an intense deadline oriented field. To top that off, we are a very small firm. Like it doesn’t get any smaller than us, short of the lawyer not having a staff and doing everything him/herself. Meet our staff….. Me, Myself & I. And yes, I wear that goofy hat IN the office all the time. Okay, not really.
We do have an attorney who occasionally helps us out and we made full use of his law degree today by sticking him on the photocopy machine to free me up so I could still pound out docs, then the guy whose name is on the door could proof/sign….then off they went to our “helper” to copy so I could file everything prior to the deadline. Yep, it’s a glamorous life. And although the helper attorney was very kind about helping out, I’m pretty sure he wanted to shoot me. 
In the midst of the chaos filings, I disappeared slipped out for some interval work at the gym lunch. I am very lucky in that I have a small but full gym in my building which is free to its tenants. I don’t use it much unless it is CRAZY cold out or sleeting or….well those are about the only reasons. I’m not much of a gym rat and tend to only use a gym for its pool (and this gym doesn’t have a pool). However, since today was my first of many “speed play” days, I took it to the gym and the DREADmill. Thanks goes to Frogger for giving me some direction!
I am not a DREADmill runner. I can never get the speed right. I’m either going too slow and bumping up on the front of the machine and/or annoyingly stepping on the front guard. I know you have somebody at your gym who is CONSTANTLY stepping on the guard and I’m sure it drives you as crazy as it does me to hear that non-stop slapping. Well, it drives me just as crazy to be the one doing the slapping. If the machine isn’t too slow, then it is too fast and trying to flip me off the back. I must look ridiculous. And when I’m on the DREADmill, I sweat like I have never ran before in my life. 
I try to look like this: 
But yeah, we know that I don’t. In fact the DREADmill is so much of an effort for me both mentally and physically that I always need a shower before going back to the office. Good thing the shower at the gym is nicer than mine at home most locker rooms.
Then back to work I went for more chaos fun. Very short workout. I did some speed play with slow jogging in between. I was on the DREADmill for less than 25 minutes. Shortest.Workout.Ever. But it’s in the done column and I didn’t want to do too much too fast. This was a test.
How do you feel about the DREADmill? Are you the graceful swan or the slapping idiot? Or do you just skip it all together? Tell me! Or feel free to give me pointers!
Amanda – TooTallFritz
TooTallFritz 
TTF…well, I won’t need to spend time giving ya pointers since I been giving ya lots on that via good-ole email. But, will add a few things to what you note about Dreadmil.
Yes…you do sweat like a drowned-rat cause you running in comfortable warmth…if you training to run a spring marathon or race where the temps are usually warmer…then this “sweat-equity” running on Dreadmill is useful technique to nurture your sweat-response in the midst of winter. Takes ca 3-4 weeks for sweat response to acclimate to warm-weather running. By adapt I mean gets more efficient at cooling, and more importantly retaining ions like Na, Cl, Mg and such.
Yes…I do at times have tendency to slap or straff the front guard. It is a sign for me that I am over-striding relative to the speed and need to shorten a bit and increase the turn-over. Dreadmill is great for fine-tuning run form and gait…but ya got to pay a lot of attention and constantly keep your mind conscious to keep the turnover and form. Great to work on aspects of form like standing up and running tall….eliminating side-to-side rotation…pumping arms forward and backward in sync with the legs and such. And if you spend a lotfa fime thinking and working on that…the time and miles go by faster! Ditto for messing with the manual settings like when running intervals….keeps ya busy and not as much time to “Dread.”
If you are fortunate enough to have access to a Dreadmill that counts your steps (like mine does)…then you can get real nice end of workout feedback and calculate your Stride Rate by dividing total number of steps by total time in minutes. Just like cadence in a bicycle, optimal SR when you are running at greatest efficiency is 180 steps per minute. Usually when I run the slower turtle game in the 6-6.7 mph range my SR tends to be on low side ca 172-175. But where I want it closest to optimal is at my goal race pace…so when I run the 7:55-8:00 goal marathon pace and it comes out at 178-182…then I have evidence I am running about as effectively as I can for that speed.
You can also calculate your SR in the real world simply by counting the number of foot-strikes of one of your legs over 1-min of running and multiply by two. This also gives ya something to divert your mind on some of those long runs…but where you really want to check on your SR is when you are running or training at your target race pace. Give it a try…but if you not a “bean-counter” then just as fine to “run-by-feel” and whatever feels good to ya!
Pingback: Short, sweet and effective… | RunJunky