Cheating on the treadmill

We had a warm stretch of weather recently (warm being a relative term here in the Frozen Tundra), warm enough that I decided to leave the treadmill out of my weekend running adventures. I hope the treadmill wasn’t too offended by the slight, but the thought of actually running somewhere was just too appealing to pass up.

It took me almost 20 minutes to track down all of my outdoor running paraphernalia since the treadmill and I have been such good buds for most of the fall and all of the winter. I set the Garmin GPS watch (fabulous running gadget that is technically DH’s but since he hasn’t run since shortly after his DNF in the marathon I have taken it over) outside to gain a satellite signal, came back in and stripped off my fleecy vest because it was too warm for it. I also had to make sure my Nike arm strap MP3 player had a new battery in it so I didn’t run out of juice for the very outdated tunes I’ve had uploaded on it for the past 3 years. It always seems like a good idea to upload new tunes to it when I am listening to Pink singing Let’s Get this Party Started, but when I get home I throw the player back in the running bin and forget about it until the next outdoor run. Hey I also have UB40 singing Red Red Wine, and that song is always a good idea isn’t it?

The run was fairly uneventful. I passed a gaggle of Army people who were congregated after a run (I assume because they all looked sweaty and many had red faces), I only know they were army because of the telltale ARMY on their t-shirts (yes I am very observant). I also ran along a road that is partially closed off to all traffic, and it was only barely passable by foot. Aside from that there were very few distractions along the way. I remembered what hills are, and my quads and hamstrings appreciated the extra workout they got running up and down some nice hills. I liked it enough that I ran outside the next day as well. Sadly, winter reappeared on Monday and our streets are now snow covered again. The treadmill and I resumed our relationship this afternoon, I did get to catch the end of Oprah so it wasn’t all bad.