Race preview: If you can't run fast, run smart

First off, sleep has been much, much better. Alternating night has brought me two nights of eight hours of sleep each (after the second, I hugged many of my co-workers upon arriving at the office and told them they could ask me for anything!). Also, I have not used any sleeping pills for the past three nights and so far, so good. Finally, on at least three occasions, Thing 2 woke up and put herself back to sleep in the middle of the night. So I am feeling optimistic on the sleep front. And to any new or prospective parent I might have scared or discouraged... I am sorry! I loathed being discouraged about sleep deprivation when I was pregnant and then a new mom and I hesitated writing about it just to avoid discouraging others (though I guess there is a difference btwn writing about it on one's blog and having someone come up to you and say "Congratulations on your new baby, are you ready to never sleep again?" which happened on more than one occasion). Anyhow my take home from this is that there is almost always a solution to problems like these, the solution inevitably comes with trade offs (not sleeping with hubby) but it is good to know that there are work-arounds. My other take home is that no matter how discouraging a particular behaviour is (waking up every 90 minutes or stripping naked and rolling on the floor in the subway), 99% of the time these behaviours are phases that pass.

So, 10 km race tomorrow - same one I do every year pregnant or not. After a foot injury, the flu, a cracked rib (torn intercoastal?) which still hurts and sleep deprivation I really have no idea what kind of 10 km shape I am in. And so, I did a "find my 10 km pace" work-out on Friday in which I ran 5 km warm-up followed by 4 km at a pace I felt I could hold for 10 km. That pace wound up being 6:36/mile otherwise known as 41 minutes for 10 km. Yikes. My guess is this is probably right around where I am at at the moment though if the stars lined up, I could perhaps pull off 40:30 and if things get ugly, it could go more like 42:30. It's a little discouraging but it's a start and as I said in the title, if I can't run fast (relative to my PB... sorry that title is really snooty... I mean fast relative to what I have run) I'll have to settle for running smart and trying to beat as many people as possible so I can win this series and get free entries again for next year!

Finally, random treadmill question: I have an amazing treadmill. It goes to 12.5 miles/hour and it a fitness club quality machine. Here's the problem, increasingly when I touch the panel at all during the run (i.e. to change speed or incline) the whole machine just dies, belt stops, display goes blank, as if I am shorting it out. It is much worse in the winter when the air is dry due to our heating system. It makes running intervals pretty much impossible or at least I have to re-start the treadmill after every interval. Also it means I have to commit to a speed and incline for the entire length of my run (which is actually a good thing in some ways since I tend to run too fast on my easy days on the treadmill out of sheer boredom). Anyone else have this issue? I figure I need to ground the treadmill but have no idea how. Just curious if this is a common problem.