November 19

After mistakenly telling a student she could make up a test today, I realized I had a meeting after school. So I go to this meeting (actually, it's training and information on using our new interactive whiteboards), which lasts until about 4:30. I've now been gone for a significant period of time today, but the wife says it's OK to stay and run. So I do.

OK, so November is generally disgusting weather, at least in Indiana. Most of the time it's anywhere from relatively cool to kind of cold, windy, ugly-looking (not too much sun, lots of gray clouds). Today was prototypical. I didn't have the heart (or, perhaps, the guts) to go outside, even though it really wasn't that bad. So I wimped out and ran on the treadmill.

I ran a mile at a 12:00 pace. Pretty slow, overall, but I'm really trying not to kill myself or my motivation by trying to go to fast too soon. Then I walked a 1/4-mile. Let me just say, though, that running on the treadmill is not totally awesome. First of all, it's like 70° inside, making it just a bit hot to run, what with no breeze. Second, all I have to look at is myself--useful if I really want to look at my form (I didn't want to today)--but otherwise incredibly boring. Rather than doing much thinking whilst running, I mostly found myself just shutting off my brain. I'd really rather do a little thinking. To be fair, at 1/4-mile, I caught myself thinking about the workouts one of the girls on my CC team is running right now, while at 0.51 miles I noticed that I only had 6 minutes left until the mile. At 0.75 miles I thought about Jeff Galloway's book (though I really don't remember any more than that). At 0.86 miles, I wondered about the grade adjustment function on the treadmill and pondered finishing uphill. Then I told myself not to be stupid. At 0.93 miles, I noticed the little blinking light had almost made it around the little circle on the display, while the big guy who had been lifting weights decided it was time to run, and I decided never to cross him.

Bottom line...I've got to stay off the treadmill as much as possible. Especially if I ever manage to run longer distances. I think I might die of boredom.