My past 2 Track Tuesdays have ended up as Treadmill Tuesday. Since the track surprisingly does not look like this.
Clean track
And looks more like this.
My paint skills need work.
Sorry, my paint skills are lacking. That’s snow and ice on the track. Not even a single lane is clear and only a crazy person would shovel a track. Although, I did drive around to 3 tracks to see if any were clear so I’m at least a little crazy.
I had 2 choices for speed work. 1.) Get on the treadmill (which would probably tell me 800 meters is 1000 meters and would run farther than I intended, more on that later) or 2.) take my speed work to the streets!
I found a short local street that is pretty much dead end in both directions and figured it would be perfect for speed work. The straightaway part of the street was over 800 meters so it was perfect and you could duck down any side street if you needed extra space.
Google Maps image
The picture above is from google maps and did not look as pretty as this at all. In reality, it was dark, cold and the yards were covered with snow.
Pros of street speed work:
- The street is completely plowed so ice and snow are not a factor.
- Got my speed work in outside!
Cons of street speed work:
- Even though the street was a dead end there was still a lot of traffic.
- Too dark. Did speed work after work and it got dark fast! The street is not perfectly paved so it was hard to see dips, grooves, sewers etc.
- Because it’s a straightaway it’s a hard to tell where you are at. Lots of looking down at your watch to see your distance. Which was too dark to see and had to turn on the light on the Garmin.
- Times were slightly slower due to looking down at your watch to see distance, moving over for cars and watching where you were going.
- It got boring running the same street. Which I was surprised, I thought running on a track was pretty boring.
- Lots of weird looks from cars passing.
Hopefully, I will not have to resort to street speed work often, maybe I’ll bring a headlamp with me to see better. It is warming up this weekend so my next Track Tuesday should be on an actual track.
What do you do when you can’t do your speed work outdoors? Treadmill? skip it? street it?
My latest email from the Cleveland Marathon says 2 important things. 1.) Registration prices go up on January 10th! Register NOW! 2.) If you register by then you still get the early bird registration gift. Which is a shoe wallet! I’ve always been curious about using one of these.
I’m a treadmill speedwork girl (when the track is snow covered)! I hate the treadmill otherwise – I can only seem to love it for speedwork. Weird, right?
Weird looks from cars passing should be in the pros column. Haha. In HS we would do our speed work in the school. Brecksville HS is basically one very long hallway so we would just run back and forth. The only drawback was having to make hairpin turns at the ends of the hall. Now I basically avoid any speed work during the winter and just do hill work instead.
i will NOT run outside in this weather. i simply refuse
that’s why my running is mostly a failure all winter!!! then again, i never do speed training!
I agree with Alana. I am not much of a cold weather runner. I really should try to be, but I’m such a freeze baby. The treadmill is my best friend in the winter
WTG on still getting it in! I usually stick outside too, if I can, but do notice lost time when I slow down to stare at my watch!
i actually NEVER do my speedwork on a track. is that weird? it’s more that i’ve been too lazy to figure out which ones are open and what hours. all my speedwork is either done on the treadmill or using my Garmin for intervals (aka street speed). although the nice part about my street is that it is a big circle so I pretend it’s my racing oval and I even get yelled encouragement from the residents.
Maybe I’m just too new at this, but I cannot get the hang of running on a treadmill. Over Christmas the weather was awful in Maryland on a day on which I hoped to run so I tried my in-laws’ treadmill. The entire time I felt like I was one misstep away from a sprained ankle even when the belt wasn’t going very fast at all.
Fortunately, one of the high schools at which I work has an indoor track and I can use that for just about any running I need to do when it’s bad outside. I really like running on it, and the subtle heat from the indoor pool that is adjacent to the track warms everything up and creates a really nice environment for running,
I thought it was odd how much traffic that street gets. I think a lot of people are looking for a way to get out of the Lake Rd traffic and think its going to connect to the rest of Edgewater. At least its a wide road. And just look out for the suspicious residents on that street!
I have gotten used to street speedwork this past year. I tried speedwork once on the treadmill and it was not at all productive. Probably quite entertaining for those that may have seen me doing it. Treadmill: 1, Steph: 0
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Although I’ll do speed work on the treadmill if I have to, I much prefer doing it outdoors, even if that means taking it to the street. I much prefer learning to control my pace when I’m doing speed work, as opposed to punching it into the treadmill. I’ve done 400m repeats a few times along park paths or mostly empty sidewalks, but the track is 100x better of course, and so much easier to gauge distance with!
In any case, good luck with your trainig!
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