18 Miles to Nowhere

Living at the foot of Pike's Peak and the Rocky Mountains has many perks. Natural beauty is all around, recreation activities are nearly limitless, and trails abound for running outdoors. Very few things in life are only positives. Almost all positives, have their counterbalancing "less than positives". In this case, living at the foot of Pike's Peak also comes with some pretty miserable winter conditions. I love the fact that Colorado has a real winter, and I love running in the snow. But as I have explained before (Below 20 and Windy), I don't run outside once the conditions deteriorate past a certain point. Unfortunately, Saturday was one of those days.

I had gone to bed expecting cold weather in the morning, but I was also expecting the temperatures to warm up by a reasonable hour. I took my time getting out of bed Saturday morning and when I checked the weather at around 6:30am, it was 13 degrees F. With the wind chill, the temp was -1 F. That was clearly outside the rules of when I will run outdoors. It looked like by 10am, the temperature with the wind chill would be over 20 degrees and that would be reasonable to run in. But the day called for an 18 mile run and that was going to start eating in to the after noon if I waited that long.

I was completely torn. Actually, I wasn't. I had no desire to run 18 miles on a treadmill, so I started the morning assuming I would wait out the weather. I ate a regular breakfast, assuming I would have a (singular) Clif Bar about an hour before running. Then I waited. At 8am, the temperatures weren't coming up as fast as predicted. The temp with the wind chill was still showing -1F. Now I was starting to think I needed to do something. We had plans with 4 other couples starting in the early evening, so I couldn't put this off all day.

Somewhere around 8:30am I posted on FaceBook's Running page that I was about to run 18 miles on the treadmill and would someone kindly shoot me now. No one took me up on it. So by 8:45 I had put the extended version of Return of the King in the DVD play, had stretched and was starting out on a long run to nowhere.

Even on the best of days, I hate the treadmill. Oh, I appreciate having an option when the conditions outside are nasty. But I can't think of any good reason to run 18 miles on a treadmill. I can think of several hundred good reasons not to run 18 miles on a treadmill and even with the movie playing, I think I touched on most of them Saturday. So I started creating mini milestones to help the time go by.

1. First Clif Shot Gel at 4.75 miles.
   
2. Change headband at 8.5 miles.
   
3. Treadmill can only run 90 minutes at a time, so stop at 9 miles. Refill water bottle and start back up.
   
4. Second Clif Shot Gel at 9.5 miles.
   
5. Put in second disc of Return of the King.
   
6. Tell yourself at 12 miles - "this is what this run is all about, building leg strength for the later miles".
   
7. Third Clif Shot Gel at 14 miles. Only 4 to go.
   
8. Change headband at 15 miles.
   

I could have had milestones every half mile and I don't think it would have helped. I can't think of anything as monotonous as running 18 miles on a treadmill. Nothing changes. You go nowhere. I tried running a couple of miles at a different pace to break things up. No help. I suppose I could have put some hills in to the run, but I wasn't excited about running up a hill I didn't have to. So on it went.

And on.

And on.

And then it was done. Could I ever do that again? Sure I could. Would I ever do that again. I'm hoping not. I need to figure out how to run outdoors in less favorable weather conditions. And this long run is powerful motivation to do that. I suppose I was a little gun shy this week based on last week's near disaster. But I really don't want to ever have to spend that much time on a treadmill again.

One of the guys on FaceBook misunderstood me. He responded to my post with, "I don't understand you people who love to run on treadmills. I don't think you understand what you are missing." Yeah. I understand. I think he missed the part about "shoot me now". Or maybe he was working in a second language and that phrase didn't quite make sense. In any case, the workout is done and I'm one week closer to Napa. And I managed to do it without going anywhere.