Ice Day Treadmill

Read something in a blog the other day that sparked my interest.  She asked “if I never binge again, what will I look forward to?”  WOW.  This makes me think of my own eating disorder/disordered eating as an emotional binge eater.  For the last almost 4 weeks I have abstained from eating anything “off diet,” which in turn means I have also abstained from any binge eating behavior.  Now, I want to ask myself the same question she asked…if I never binge again, what will I look forward to?  Well, let me try to answer that.  First, I will look forward to knowing that I am enjoying my food without overindulging to the point of feeling sick or becoming fat again.  I will look forward to not feeling guilt over my eating habits.  I will look forward to eating the healthy (and very tasty) foods that are good for me and help my body function the way it’s supposed to.  I will look forward to the little indulgences that I allow myself every now and then that much more because they will actually be a treat and not a daily occurrence like it was in the past.  I will look forward to wearing whatever clothes I want to and actually looking good in them (without lying to myself or being in denial about what I actually look like).  I will look forward to having an athletic body that will do just about anything I want it to because I’m not weighing it down with excessive amounts of fatty and otherwise bad for me foods.  I will look forward to LIVING LIFE…plain and simple…cut and dry.

Now I want to talk a little about the diet I’m doing.  It’s is strictly portion controlled.  I do bend the rules a little bit with certain things.  For instance, if it says to have half of a baked sweet potato here and there.  Instead, I just eat an entire small-ish one.  Also, when I choose the half of an avocado sprinkled with sea salt for my snack, I just buy a regular sized avocado and eat the whole thing.  If I didn’t eat the whole thing, I would throw away the other half because it would turn brown and aesthetically, I wouldn’t be able to eat it…just like a brown banana…just gross to me. 

So this morning, as I mentioned yesterday, I had planned to go for a 3.3 mile outdoor run, but after my treacherous drive home on patchy ice, I opted to shoot for the treadmill instead as I was sure the sidewalks and paved park trails would all be icy and unsafe to run on.  When I got up this morning, I had intended to drive to the gym and use their nice treadmills with the TV’s that you can see because they’re in front of you.  However, I was foiled by patchy ice and determined that it wasn’t safe to drive if I didn’t HAVE to.  So, I braved the icy walk from my apartment to the front of the complex where the fitness closet (it’s so small that’s the best way to describe it…seriously) is located.  I walk in and a lady and her young daughter were just leaving.  She saw my “will run for Boston” headband and said she really liked it, and then scooted out the door, leaving me all alone in the closet.

I take off my outer layer of clothing and hop on the treadmill.  After about a third of a mile, I realize it’s going to get quite warm and needed to turn on the ceiling fan…also, maybe I should go ahead and turn on the TV even though I had no plans to take off my earphones and stop listening to my music…also despite the fact that the TV was not in front of me.  The treadmills in the closet are up against the wall and the TV is up in the corner and to the right.  So, I can see it out of the corner of my eye.  Anyway, I had set my Garmin for me to manually mark the “laps” (aka-miles) as I hit them.  Instead of pausing my Garmin when I paused the treadmill to turn on the fan and the TV, I instead hit the lap button.  Dammit.  So I just marked the time and reset my Garmin and then reset the treadmill to start over.  I had gone a third of a mile…so, if I did another 3 miles on the treadmill, I will have gotten in the 3.3 miles I was originally going to run outside.  Cool!  As I ran the 3 miles, I epically failed at hitting the lap button at the correct times…twice.  Ugh.  So, I just used it for my overall time and added the time from the first third of a mile I did and got a total of 34:33 minutes for 3.3-ish miles.  Also, I set it to a 1.5% incline.  I started at 6.0mph (10 min/mi pace) and ended it going at 5.5mph (10:54 min/mi pace).  Honestly, I should have set the treadmill for a 10:20 pace and just went with that.  At the end of the run, I desperately wanted to grab the handles, but managed to resist the urges.  Also, as I was running, I’m guessing it was a combination of the cold and dry air plus my clothes rubbing together, but every time my fingers brushed the hand bar in front of me, I got a little shock. 

Tomorrow is supposed to be nicer…up into the 60’s.  The good news is that, at the very least, the ice will be melted off the sidewalks and it will be safe for me to run outside for the 4 miles I want to do tomorrow.  Then, Sunday, I will run 8.5…I’ll be running in the late afternoon as I’m going to go paint shopping around noon with my friend Amanda.  I prefer this for a few reasons…1) I don’t have to wake up early to run before meeting Amanda, 2) I will have run the two days prior and running later in the day to give my legs a little bit more rest will be beneficial, and 3) I like running my longer runs in the late afternoon/early evening anyway.