February 3, 2015

Tips to Beating Treadmill Boredom

Another snow day over here for us yesterday. I was just about to head out the door when my boss texted me saying “I hope your not planning on going into the office today”. Twist my arm why don’t ya 😉

I did work on some stuff from home,talked tax return stuff with my parents, and made some phone calls to new athletes that are starting this month. Good thing I had a cute lap warmer to get me through the day. hehe

To give you a sense of how much snow we’ve gotten recently – remember that cute snowman that we made a week ago? He used to look like this…

Well, after all the last couple of storms he (and his friend that my sister made) look more like this. 5 bucks to the first person to spot him!

Needless to say, yesterday was another treadmill run, 6 miles easy which was a welcome recovery after Sunday’s long run tempo.

Since I’ve been spending quite a bit of quality time on the treadmill lately – and I’m sure some of you have been too. Last night one of my athletes texted me and asked how I am surviving all the treadmill running without dying of boredom so I thought I’d share one of my favorite ways to pass time when you’re stuck inside on the dreadmill.

5 tips to keep from getting {too} bored on the treadmill

1. Cover up the treadmill “dashboard” – seeing exactly how far I’ve run and how much I have left every.single.second. kills me so I usually use a towel or my iPad to cover up the numbers and do my best to zone out and not look at the mileage.

2. Find an audiobook or podcast that you love and listen to that instead of music – Getting lost in the story of an audiobook or podcast helps the time pass much faster than listening to music (at least for me). I use the Audible app for audiobooks and my favorite podcasts right now are Invisibilia, Stuff You Missed in History Class, Criminal, This American Life and Radio Lab – I also CAN’T wait for season 2 of Serial!

3. Vary your speed and incline – You don’t have to do a structured workout or anything but every once in a while just change up the pace a bit or put the ‘mill on an incline for .25 miles. Running outside you don’t run the same pace the whole run to make sure to switch things up inside too! I like to do a lot of my treadmill runs as “progression runs” by starting a little slower than I usually do my recovery runs and slowly increasing the speed every few miles.

4. Treat yourself to a show you love! – I am a big Nashville fan but Henri can’t stand the show so when I’m stuck on the treadmill and none of my podcasts are new I’ll get a little more caught up on my Nashville watching! 🙂

5. Remind yourself how cold/snowy/unsafe it would be to run outside – I am pretty tough when it comes to weather conditions – heck I’m a born and bred New Englander. So when I’m stuck on the treadmill it’s for a very good reason! It is either NEGATIVE degrees outside, a blizzard, or the roads still aren’t clear from the previous day’s (week’s) blizzard. I can get through my 10+ mile runs because I know it needs to get done and being outside at that moment would probably be more miserable – at least I can feel my fingers and toes 😉