Runners vs. tredmills; does it have to be a battle of wills?

SammySam5205

I'm training for a marathon in February and I live in D.C.. My hours during the week require me to run either very early or very late (aka when it's dark out), and doing that where I live makes me nervous. Therefore, I have to run inside for about 60% of my running.

However, running 6 miles on a treadmill feels terrible! I don't mind the run, but the willpower to keep going and the boredom are what get me! I listen to an ipod in my gym, does anyone have any suggestions or a change of perspective that can help me get out of this treadmill mental rut?

fzyfrog

Put it in front of a TV and DVD player and watch movies.

agthorn

I am training for a 15K in December and also have to do some running inside. I listen to music on my ipod and also watch the TV with closed captioning. I did 5 miles on the treadmill last night. But I also try to use it as an opportunity to gauge my running form, because there are mirrors all over the gym - you can't really do that when you're running outside.

jacquiker

I hate running on the treadmill so avoid it when I can - when I have no choice then I tend to do interval sessions - something along the lines of a 5 minute warm up followed by several repeats (normally I can't stomach more than 5 reps!) of 400m fast with 200m v slow jog or 2 mins fast 1 min slow then a 5 minute cool down. This makes the time pass SO much faster, I feel like I've worked harder but the best thing is that the sessions can be shorted because the effort put into them is more (rather than going slow - medium speed for longer).