Alive and Amplified

Due to work commitments I'm doing most of my running at the gym and it sucks. It's boring. There's nothing to look at aside from the TV and it's always on some rubbish reality TV show or MTV. I find myself thinking about how many more minutes I've got left to go 1 minute into the run. It's not as good as running outside in terms of technique,the difficulty of propelling yourself forward versus keeping up, not to mention fighting strong winds or dodging around people going slower than you are. It's hotter than running outside with no wind to cool you down and I get really sweaty. :(

Still, it's always there. It's never raining inside the gym. It's never sunny inside the gym - although sometimes in summer the AC does sometimes fail. It's never windy inside the gym. There are no jokers telling me I should be running when I'm walking to cool down after a 4 mile run. There are no hecklers at all in fact. I'm not going to be run over by someone on a school run. I'm not going to get overexcited Jack Russels running up to me and doing circles around my feet.

Today's run was a 35 tempo run. I intended to do 10 minutes warmup, 20 minutes at 85% of HRM, and 5 minutes cooldown. But I forgot to set a custom 85%, thought Garmin Level 5 corresponded to 85% when as far as I can tell it's closer to 90%. I should have known something was up when I was running at suspiciously close to race pace, but I kept up anyway. I know better for next time. It was a good run, and despite the dull surroundings I enjoyed it and felt knackered but energised at the same time by the end of it.