Flipping through Self Magazine the other day, I found a section titled “Lose 8 pounds”. The article gave diet and workouts to help the readers lose weight. One of the workouts I found very interesting. It is called a Treadmill Hike. Basically, the workout is 20 minutes on the treadmill with varying inclines between three percent and twelve percent. I have been doing research a lot lately on increasing my walking speed. I read that walking inclines/hills can help to increase walking speed, so I decided to give this work out a try. I tore the page out of my magazine, and I headed to the gym.
The workout calls for the reader to walk at a speed of 3.5 on the treadmill for 20 minutes. Walking at this speed, the work out would take me just over a mile. Since I try to run 5k (3.1 miles) on Tuesday and Thursday nights, my plan was to run a mile on the treadmill, then start this routine, then run about another mile, or whatever would take me to 5k. I got to the gym and jumped on a treadmill. My favorite treadmill was taken, but that’s ok.
I started running with my Galloway intervals and I hit the one mile mark right around twelve minutes. I then started the treadmill hike. Wow! It was really hard! I could handle the inclines of three to six fairly easily, but when I was on an incline of seven to twelve, I was really struggling. I had to hold on just to stay on the treadmill at inclines of eight to twelve. I was sweating buckets, more than I do when running. How hard this workout was really surprised me. I thought--20 minutes, twelve percent…sounds easy, right? Boy was I wrong. It was real work! Once I was done the 20 minutes, I walked two more minutes at zero incline to catch my breath. I started to run again but I was really tired, huffing and puffing. I walked another minute or so till I hit the 2.5 mile mark and my workout was over.
Now I see why the trainer who designed this plan only called for a twenty minute workout. I think I will go with my above plan once a week—during my easy run nights. I will not push myself to far beyond what I did last night, hopefully just a little improvement each week. I do not want to give up a night of running, but I really like how challenging this plan was. I short run before and after fit well. I hope this plan increases my walking speed and my fitness level.
A dream is a wish…
--Amy
Here is a link to the article if you are interested.
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