I'll just be honest. Long runs on the treadmill absolutely suck. Yes it could only be four miles, but because it was a "long" run and not just a regular training run it sucked. In my mind long runs should always be done outside where there's at least interesting stuff to look at.

In order to entertain myself last night while I was running I decided to play with the inclines. I set the speed at 5.3 mph, which is a 11:19 minute-mile, just a little faster than the 11:30's I averaged in my long run last weekend.

There was no real rhyme or reason to my inclines. I started by adding a .5% increase every 30 seconds until I got to 3% and then I decreased .5% every 30 seconds until I was back at 0.

I kept it flat for a while and then I did a longer climb. Every minute increasing .5% until I got up to 4% and then taking it off by the .5's until I was back at zero.

For the last little 10 minutes or so I just played around taking it up by half percents to 2% and then back down.

I was trying to make the run as realistic to the outside as possible and the hills aren't really predictable there. And I was trying to entertain myself because seriously, I miss running outside so much.

Also just wanted to throw this link out to a great story I just read in the Washington Post about this insane 100-mile race in Tennessee. If you have a few minutes, check it out.