Hiding Out From the Rain -- HIIT at the Gym

by - Thursday, May 01, 2014

Tuesday and Wednesday it pretty much poured all day long in DC, and since I wasn't about to ruin my brand new running shoes by getting them completely water-logged, I decided to take Wednesday's run indoors.

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I jogged the two blocks to the gym fully prepared to grind it out on the treadmill with my music on tuning the world out.

But when I got there, my Ironman buddy had just grabbed a treadmill too. So I grabbed the one next to him and we chatted through our warm ups.

He had something like an hour of running he needed to get done, while I was planning to do a shorter interval work.

The other day when I was playing around on Instagram, I found a new HIIT workout that I thought I'd give a try.

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Where would I be without Instagram for inspiration?

My problem with intervals is that I always start out way, way too fast and don't recover at an easy enough pace, so by the last half of the workout I'm completely gassed.

That was definitely the case yesterday too. With about three intervals to go, my legs were toast and instead of jogging for my recovery minute, I definitely slowed down to a walk.

Running on the treadmill certainly didn't really follow the Zen running theme I've been going for with my runs lately, but I will say it was kind of fun to push myself to run fast again.

And when I got home from the gym, I had fleeting thoughts of maybe making intervals a more regular thing...almost like with a training plan...

But I probably shouldn't get ahead of myself. Not trying to dive into a training plan when I just want to enjoy running for running's sake.

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2 comments

  1. Yes! I love running intervals on the treadmill. You don't have to think about the speed, just keep up with the belt. Muscle memory eventually takes over.

    I also like to increase the speed until I can't complete the time or distance anymore. Intervals to failure never fails. Like if I"m doing half mile fast intervals, I'll set the first speed to 9.4, then 9.6, 9.8, 10.0, and usually i'll fail somewhere before 11. it is quite an intense workout.

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  2. I also love the treadmill. It allows me to do specific trainings that are suited for exactly me. I love doing a minute of jogging and then 30 seconds of sprinting, and I can just program the treadmill to repeat this 90 program over and over again, it is superb.

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