A few years ago, I could proudly claim that I was not a treadmill runner. On some of the worst weather days, I would just run outside for shorter distances or cross-train indoors. Even after the 2015 fall, when I hit a patch of ice and flew through the air, landing on my face and breaking four different bones along the jaw, I have avoided the treadmill….until recently.

Last year, I had another icy fall. (My friends joke that I am very good at falling.) This time, I fractured my wrist and was put in a cast for a month. Not wanting to take that time off running, I learned to embrace the treadmill until I was out of my cast.

Now, a year older and wiser, I am being more cautious. I have been trying to plan my runs around days and times when roads are dryer and visibility is good, but we have already had so many days of icy weather that I have already returned to running indoors more often. This year, I am really trying to get comfortable on the treadmill.

In the past eight days, I have been able to run outdoors three times but icy conditions steered me towards the treadmill on three other days. After my first attempt, surprisingly enough, I felt great. My cadence was good, I felt my legs turning over well and I finished an 11 kilometre run with paces comparable to paces that I would typically run outdoors. A few days later, I returned to the treadmill for a slightly longer run (14km) and that felt even better. I thought that I had finally reached a turning point in my relationship with the treadmill but, on Treadmill Run #3, I felt awful. While my leg turn-over felt good, my heartrate seemed to be in the right zone and I had a delightfully sweaty run, my pacing was the slowest ever. I know that all runs can’t be good but the data from this one really disappointed me. For the rest of the day, I looked for the positives. I reminded myself that I ran and, while it wasn’t the run that I wanted, it was still better than not running at all. And Garmin proclaimed that my run was productive, which is a huge win in the battle of trying to impress my watch.

Today, just 2 days later, we are at the end of a spring-like thaw and I ran outside for the first time in a week. It felt awesome. But it is still only the beginning of January and I am pretty sure that I have more indoor run days ahead of me. Even if I don’t, I think I need to continue with some work on the treadmill once or twice a week to work on running form or just add some junk miles. That way, I should be that much more comfortable with the treadmill if and when the nasty winter weather does return. Besides, my laundry pile of running shorts and tees has been a nice change from the winter layers, which is probably the best reason of all to stick with the treadmill.