Real runners

You are right on!! Treadmills are for people that are not really serious runners, where I come from you run in the rain or you don't call yourself a runner!! x

Tough It Out wrote:

Just gives evryone else a reason to call you a skinny bleeping bleep if you ask me.

but we didn't ask you

Treadmills are great when the conditions are too hazardous for easy running (i.e. icy roads that are covered with 3" of slush). Otherwise I'm with you. A bit of rain, wind, or snow is not going to injure anyone.

Ingrid Kristenson did a great deal of her running on a Treadmill and did marathon champ at the 2000 trials.

Yah, but they weren't real runners. Not like the above mentioned letsrun posters, they're real runners.

B.F. wrote:

Ingrid Kristenson did a great deal of her running on a Treadmill and did marathon champ at the 2000 trials.

yes but there was 6ft of snow outside and a bear bigger than granny

I'm with you, too! Who cares about how one races? As long as we run in the elements and avoid treadmills, we da men!

Real runners? Define that... let's see what you young goobers do when you are approaching 50! A treadmill can make it easy on the legs sometimes for recovery.

or even better, when you have kids you need to watch over in the house but need a run... with an attitude like that, you probably won't make it running until 50!

The state of the national running community has a problem. There is a flaw. It is that we are unable to be satisfied with the state of American distance running. We look to the Africans and compare ourselves and when we are unable to compete we blame it on drugs. We completely dismiss the work that is set forth in order to achieve the time. We have no faith in our athletes. Talk to anyone on the topic of Alan Webb and it is amazing the responses that you hear. “OH Alan, yeah he peaked in high school.” “He was so dumb to leave college” “He is done, he’ll never be the same”. That is ridiculous! Here is the KID who brought American distance running into the mainstream. ESPN televised his 1500 race. He was on David Letterman. And a year later we have lost interest. How can this be? It is not that hard too just have faith in the KID. He isn’t much older than us and we have the right to tear him down, why because he had a bad season? Well that is not fair. The way I see it he is a test he will provide a measuring bar for the decision of college runners to turn professional. We should support him as much as possible. If he succeeds it would be the best thing for American distance running in a long time. But it is going to be very hard for him to succeed with all the negativity that is thrown at him. Whether you like his attitude or not he is a great hope for us and we can’t lose faith in him.

What the hell does this have to do with the thread? Unless you can tie Webb to treadmill running, start another thread or STFU.

We get satisfied with what we do. Those who run on treadmills are sickly satisfied with that. We're a nation of slothen runners. We've got to stop being like that.

I couldn't agree more with this post...I've never run a mile on a treadmill, and never will. Getting out and running no matter the conditions makes you tougher than all those babies who cry about getting hurt. When everybody at work complains about the weather just think to yourself how you ran 10 miles in that shit. Besides, IMHO, its fun, and like the person who started this thread, one of the bonuses of running is exploration and challenge.

One of my other pet peeves-I also hate how people need one of these manicured rail trails- so many people rave about a boring, flat as a pancake, neverending path of cinder, where the running couldn't be any easier (or boring).

I think it makes you tougher running outside in the elements, especially when it is really bad outside. Kind of like the story of Dick Beardsley do hill repeats in the middle of a snow storm (or right after a storm), where he couldn't actually run on heartbreak hill, so he had to use a service road next to it. He thought "No one else is tough enough to be doing this workout right now".

That being said, it really sucks when you're running in the rain and it is like 33-34 degrees outside. Not cold enough for snow, cold enough to be really damn cold.

Anyone who refuses to do treadmill running is simply depriving himself of one potentially valuable training modality. In my best years of competitive running, I was constantly trying to find ways to allow me to train at high volume and high intensity without breaking down. Sometimes, that involved a lot of intense treadmill running. Other times, it involved a lot of intense pool running. I doubt that the so-called "real runners" on this thread are training anywhere near as hard as I did back then.

An Olympic trials marathon was won by a person who strictly ran on a treadmill, so your tough guy attitude is pointless. It is all about running faster, not who can run in freezing weather with no shirt on. I am surprised you lost track of why people train. You train so that you can survive the elements while everybody else is training to get faster.

O'Leary wrote:

We completely dismiss the work that is set forth in order to achieve the time.

I don't buy this one at all

Dude I'm there!!!!

I run for Slippery Rock and we have an indoor track. I set foot on it only to do a workout in the winter or for an indoor track meet, neither of which I am too fond of. We do all of our runs, 90 degrees, or -10 degrees, 4 in the afternoon, or 6 in the morning OUTSIDE where running should be done. And don't even talk to me about treadmills, those are for lazy ass's that want to watch TV when they run. I ran on a treadmill for our Exercise Science department when they were performing simple Vo2 tests and Lactate Threshold tests. Other than that I don't even like looking at them. What it boils down too is.....

*Treadmills suck

*Indoor tracks suck...but they are very useful for workouts and indoor meets.

*Running new/unroutine paths is where it's at, as long as you're still getting in the quality running that needs to get done!

PEACE OUT!!

i highly agree. a couple years ago, it snowed about a foot here after some other snow had melted and frozen underneath it. it really wasn't that bad, though. our coach told us to run 8 miles on the indoor track. i made it a mile then went outside. my teammates thought i was crazy but doing a distance run on the indoor track was hell for me. i'll take snow any day.