Treadmill Challengers

[Guest guest]

This video is geared toward runners, and says that you will increase

your speed by using in it you training. It's about 40 minutes long,

and has 4 runners on treadmills, with a guy (can't remember his name)

leading the work out who's not on a treadmill. He's wearing a

headset microphone, which I found funny for some reason. lol

I decided I would try to do this program walking, but as I was doing

the math in my head I realized that wasn't going to work 100% of the

time. Uh, oh. I don't even remember the last time I tried to jog.

I attempted the couch to 5k program a few years back, and got to the

week where you " run 10 min, walk 3 min, run 10 min " after having to

repeat several of the previous weeks, and then kind of hung it up.

And I'm sure I was much lighter then! Anyway, I figured I'd give it

my best shot and see what happened.

There is a bar across the bottom, that goes from 0 - 2.1 in 0.1

increments. When the red indicator is as zero, this is what the

trainer guy called your zero point (also set point?) which he

described as the speed you could " run all day at " . Well for me, that

IS actually zero, heh. But for easy math, say your zero point is a

walking 4 mph (mine is NOT, I'm sloooow). The workout starts with a

5 minute warm up, where you are moving at a speed below your zero

point. Then, there are: two 5 min intervals, a 10 min interval, two

more 5 min intervals, and a 5 min cool down. During the first

interval, you start to increase by 0.1 or 0.2 every minute. So you

would go up to 4.1 mph, 4.3 mph, etc. In the first two intervals, you

don't go up too high – I think it was about 1.2 or so above your zero

(5.2 mph with our example). Not too bad, yet. The central 10 minute

interval is where he really kicked it up! You keep increasing every

minute, until you get the end of the 10 minutes where you are now 2.1

above your zero (6.2 mph in our example, lol). For me, I had been

jogging for a about half the interval already. I made it all the way

to minute 8, and then I thought I was going to trip (or die) so I

went back down to my zero point for one minute. But I was able to

crank back up to 2.1 over my zero point and finish the last minute!

I never would have pushed that hard on my own, so that was good!

Then he kept us at the zero point for a lovely three minutes. The

last intervals do not go all the way back up to 2.1 again, so you're

on the downward slope now. Hooray! The end is weird, as the

workout ends and fades to credits with 3 minutes left on the cool

down. The clock is still on the screen, but it wraps up early.

Time really did fly by with this one, and I'm glad I finally tried

it! I'm going to like trying this one again in several weeks so I

can see how my fitness level has improved. It will be an excellent

indicator!

Sara