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Tuesday, January 26, 2010

A little like flying...

The other day I glanced at the montior on the treadmill of the woman running next to me.  I try SO hard not to compare speed, distance, pace, etc with others around me.  I know we are all different, but I just can't help it...    Something caught my eye - her incline as at -1.   What was that?  My inexpensive big box treadmill sitting in the middle of my basement only goes to +.5.  Huh.     I just had to try it.   Who knew??  Running downhill on a treadmill!  Over the years, I have logged thousand of miles walking on a treadmill - lugging myself up hills and back down again to the flat streets.     This was something new!

Runnning downhill at a pretty good clip is a little like flying.  Almost effortless.  I can really take a huge stride and just go with it.    I know that running/walking downhill uses different muscle groups - I can feel it on the fronts of my legs and in my knees.  It doesn't hurt, it is just new muscles waking up.   I don't know if technically it is harder to run downhill, and frankly I don't want to know.  I FEELS easier to me, and that is all that matters.  It is my new go-to when I am feeling tired.  I move from +1 to -1....  and fly for a while.

2 comments:

  1. Cool! My "tired" mode was always to slow way down. Now that I'm on the streets I'm sure I still do it and just don't realize.

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  2. wow - who knew?? i had no idea you could go downhill...sounds great!

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