Due to pollen invasion, I've been confined to running on treadmill. Itchy/watery eyes are not conducive to healing, and I'm sure the drivers/motorists/other runners won't appreciate my running half blind.
I've been noticing significant improvement. No fancy training, no fartlek, 30/60 etc. Just plain sprinting. Pick a pace that's borderline uncomfortable, then hold that pace as long as possible. Just 0.1 mile more or just one more minute: Trick the mind by dividing large goal into smaller, more managable pieces ie. "if you have to eat a sh*t sandwich, eat one slice at a time." This may seem pathetic to some, but I finally got a 6:27 pace down. Keep in mind this is from someone who used to huff and puff only after 500 yards, and thought 7:00 as unfathomable. I also recall that I used treadmill to get the shuffle-run 13min pace for rucking down back in college. By shuffling, there isn't much pounding on both the knees and the treadmill. It easily transitioned to the Matta mile terrain, so it was good training.
Tons of critiques out there against treadmill: boring, monotonous, not representative of "real" running, and so on. Well, it's just another tool, and IMHOO just like marksmanship, it's the user, then the tool. Make it work. Like this lady for example:
"Women's winner Carrie Pustilnik, of Delray Beach, is a mother of three daughters who works two jobs. She does virtually all of her training on a treadmill in her garage, waking up at 4:30 every morning to put in 8 to 10 miles before getting her kids ready for school.
Pustilnik, 33, was happy to get her breakthrough win in Fort Lauderdale because she made her marathon debut in this race three years ago on a whim. She has since channeled the same tenacity into running that made her a star in tennis at Spanish River High and the University of Tennessee as Carrie Spinner.
Considering her daily schedule of training, working in the morning as a sales representative and in the afternoon as a fitness trainer for kids at The Gymm Zone, plus tending to three daughters ages 3 to 8, winning the marathon may have been the easiest part of her week.
Pustilnik said confining her marathon training to the treadmill is easier on her body than running on roads. It's effective, as her winning time of 2:58:29 was almost 11 minutes faster than runner-up Shelby Speno of Parkland.
"When I run a marathon, I'm like an animal let out of a cage," Pustilnik said. "This is a peaceful three hours for me. It's a pleasure."
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/201...marathon-debut
As mentioned once, I only used one kind of drug: Audio drug. Playlists like the following: youtube.com/watch?v=lOJqicM6x84 , youtube.com/watch?v=2kxJ7UjDqO4 , youtube.com/watch?v=BQMpRWuT6hk, youtube.com/watch?v=dWWPJo0vq_Q .....usw. Take your mind right off that small gym corner to your epic/colossal movie
Again, the critiques will say no one wears mp3 player during unit run, APFT, at SFAS etc. Well, borrowing from WM A. Robbins stuff in Get Selected and Master Gene Econ on mental conditioning: How do you achieve goals? By having assured confidence. How do you get assured confidence? By winning, and achieving goals. It has to start somewhere. When you surpass physical goal even with the aid of music, you know your body is capable of such feat. That serves as a mental anchor that you can pull from when it's starting to suck. "I can do this. I've done it before. Just another mile, just another minute...etc."