Boiling a frog

When travelling for work it can be hard to keep to the workout schedule. Sometimes I’ll set out for a run in whatever town I’m in but most of the time it’s the hotel treadmill. Treadmills are boring. I try to spice it up when I can. I figure I should name these “spices” and write them down. Maybe somebody will enjoy them. A few caveats before I share: 1) I’m just some dude with zero training or expertise in fitness or health, 2) this may be way more than some folks can handle and not enough for many others, 3) I always wear the emergency shutoff clip.

In other words, do this at your own risk. Be safe. Have fun and stay fit. I’m going to call this first routine Boiling the Frog. I begin at an incline of 3% and a pace of 3.4 miles/hour. Every 60 seconds increase the incline 1%. Keep doing this till you max out at 15%. After your minute at 15% drop by 1% and increase your speed by .2 miles/hour. Repeat every 60 seconds until you are at 1% incline and 6.4 miles per hour. That’s your first 30 minutes down.

With your incline at 1% and your speed at 6.4 mph, increase your speed by .2 mph every 60 seconds. When you’ve hit 9 mph hold it for a minute then drop your speed to 6.4 mph (stay here for two minutes). Repeat. Doing this twice should take you 27 minutes. Return your speed to 6.4 mph and run out your final kilometre or so to finish at an even 10k in just over an hour.

I did this on the hotel treadmill this morning and then again in the evening. I enjoyed it. That slight change every 60 seconds made the minutes clip by quickly. There was a nice dopamine reward throughout the whole hour for both runs.

As I get older I’ve found that I sweat more. This run, both times, was utter carnage. I recommend not doing this if others are in the gym… or close by. It took me a good minute to disinfect the machines afterward. Thankfully no one else was in the gym… but now that I think about it maybe there are cameras in there. So, full confession, if this hits the inter-webs I’m that guy. I was wearing a “wife beater” and the material is fairly coarse. About 15 minutes in I was getting some nipple chaffing. Since no one was around I rolled the shirt up to let them nipples breathe. It looked like I was wearing a very high crop top. I’m sure it was a Walmart at midnight look for the ages.

I learned something else though. Once you’ve sweat so much that the shirt sticks to you, no more chafing. With the shirt plastered to you it can’t bounce around and rip your nipples off. Nice.

Give my Boiling the Frog treadmill workout a try. Change it up for your fitness level and style. Crop top, and nipple breathing exercises are not recommended but you do you.