Why didn't I think of this sooner

Everyone wants the treadmill on the right

For the last month or so, I have started doing my treadmill run before work at the Gym at the Office.  I use to focus on getting to work as early as possible so I could leave as soon as possible in the afternoon to avoid traffic.  This means I would try to squeeze my workout in during lunch time, or just before or after this peak hour.

The problem was many times my morning would get filled with meetings that made it hard to sneak away and the later in the day I put off the run, the less likely I would do it because what's the point of going to the gym, working out and then coming back to my desk for like an hour?

Now I generally get here between 8 and 8:30 and if I go straight to the gym, I can work out at a relaxed pace.  Before I was rushing to get my workout in and if others were in the gym I couldn't always be sure I wouldn't have to wait for the shower to be free.  And it's a very tight locker room.

These days I'm just doing a 5K run on the treadmill, which I can get done in just under 30 minutes (sigh).  I may bump that up to 4 miles soon as I seem to be able to run it non-stop providing I make it to the gym with some consistency.  I might also start going just to work out on the machines.

My goal is to get back to an 830 min/mile and 200 lbs.  To do that, I first have to get back to running consistently and bring my pace to a 9 min/mile and drop my weight to 210.  I'm just about there.  The scale said I was 215 this morning and I have been tottering between 212 and 215 for the last couple weeks (down from an all-time high of 219 a month or two ago!) 






My Commuting Time

Yesterday I left the house at 7:20.  It took 20 minutes (7:40)to get to the expressway entrance at Foster.  [I drive a couple miles to that entrance because its "less" congested than Irving Park or Lawrence.]

Got to O'Hare/190 10 minutes later.  Then I got to I-88 at 8am.  In the parking lot by 8:10.

today I left at 7:27 and got to Foster 15 minutes later.  All of the above was 5 minutes faster -except 190, that still takes 10 minutes which is good for rush hour.