Tiny Dancer

Tuesday 29th June 2010

This morning my only option was a treadmill run at the gym, so I settled baby Lily-Rose in at the creche and plugged into my new bookclub podcast (discussing the book Will Grayson, Will Grayson, by John Green and David Levithan, which I haven't read yet, but am now determined to!). I generally prefer running to podcasts than to music for two reasons: 1) music affects the speed and rythm of my running too much, unless a particular tune happens to be the perfect tempo for my run, which is rare, and 2) if a podcast is interesting and captures my imagination and attention, it distracts me from the pain of running, and I find I have covered more ground without even realising!

Running on a treadmill is very different to running out of doors, and to be honest, much more boring. I have never run further than 5K on a treadmill - I just can't do it, despite the distraction of 8 screen TV display at my gym. But, given that I'm on a bit of a running high at the moment, I programmed in a goal of 8K on my treadmill and set the speed to 9.5 Kph...

I noticed the lady on the treadmill in front of me appeared to be almost dancing as she ran. She was tiny, extremely toned and obviously very fit, and I wondered how she was doing it. I am probably slightly underweight, and consider myself to be fairly fit and healthy, but felt like a lumbering elephant compared to this lady, who was so light on her feet - she was like a ballerina!

Anyway, determination plus motivation plus distraction allowed me to complete my 8K, by which time I was absolutely sick of the treadmill! But, mission accomplished. The distance in miles turned out to be 4.97 - I should have worked this out before and then carried on running for another 20 seconds or so, to make it up to exactly 5 miles, but I think I'll claim it as 5 miles anyway as I did do a one minute cool down! Fair enough?

(By the way, the dancing lady in front of me moved to the side and I was able to see how she was doing it... her treadmill was set to only 7.2Kph! So she was travelling slowly, but moving her feet very quickly, taking tiny steps, pretty much half-way between a walk and a run - a little like how race-walkers look when they wiggle their hips! I wanted to try it myself, but was far too self-concious - maybe one day, if the gym ever happens to be empty!)

Distance run (in miles): 5.0
Total distance this week: 10.0
Total since starting blog: 34.7