Four Miles, Three Ways

Last week I ran about 4 miles on each of Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but each run was different.

I had planned to run with my dog on Monday, but it started to rain while we were walking to our starting place. While I don’t mind a little bit of rain, I am not ready to sacrifice the near-pristine condition of my new running shoes, so I opted for the treadmill. I was on the treadmill for over 50 minutes, but only 40 minutes of that was running. I chose the “Sport Training” program, which gives you a mix of hills and plateaus.  After my warm-up I ran mostly at 6.3 mph, but bumped it up to 6.5 mph for the last mile.

On Wednesday, I was not ready to face the world when my alarm went off, so I let my husband take the dog out while I hit snooze. When I woke up almost an hour later, I checked my work schedule and decided that I could afford to squeeze in a run and be a bit late. I chose a loop that I knew was 4-ish miles, and ended up covering 4.5 miles in 42 minutes (avg. 9:16 min/mile pace).

On Friday, it was 72F and humid when my alarm went off at 5:00, so I decided to take my dog for a short walk and then go for a solo run. As I headed out, I realized that my Garmin was dead (it had gotten knocked off of its charger), so I set the Nike+ App on my iPod Nano for 40 minutes, and headed out on a different 4-ish mile route. When I got back I used runningmap.com to check my distance–about 4.3 miles (avg. 9:18 min/mile pace).

Do you have different running routes to choose from?

Are you flexible with your fitness routine?