Before we get to the meat of today’s post, here’s a brief glance at what would be your dessert! Registration is OPEN for the  next Another Mother Runner Retreat: Run + Refresh! Join us in Ogden, Utah, May 17-20, 2018 for a little AMR R & R! Need to want to know every last detail? Click here.

 And now, on with our post…

Dimity gets her treadmill groove on.

For most mother runners, the weather outside isn’t frightful yet — but we can feel the snow and ice and cold lurking. Before winter gets here, Coach MK Fleming offers up some tips for terrific treadmill training runs:

You have probably heard runners complain about “dreadmills” and “insteadmills.” I don’t have patience for either term – treadmills are fantastic tools and should be embraced.

I live in Denver and it’s a toss-up which is more brutal around here — winter or summer! If you care about your training and have your sights on a particular finish time, you have to embrace ALL training tools at your disposal. If you don’t have a treadmill handy, you’re doing yourself a disservice and have one tool fewer in your runner’s toolbox. Here’s why:

  • Treadmills tend to be located in controlled environments – rain, snow, and crazy heat/humidity can’t affect your run indoors! Treadmills also tend to be conveniently located near toilets, which is super helpful if you’re under-the-weather or pregnant.
  • The biggest setback to training plans is injury. Even if weather is fine, road conditions may not be. I’ve learned to be wary of sunshine the day after a snowstorm; melting snow has icy layers underneath. If it’s icy outside, think carefully about the risks. If you wipe out, you could set your training back several weeks; that is far less likely to happen on a treadmill.
  • When it’s stupid hot outside, do you really want to risk running in 95+ degree heat and dehydrating or getting heat stroke? Heat stroke recovery requires two nights in the hospital for acute care, then two months to a year to fully recuperate. That’s longer than my wildest training plans!
  • Does your race have hills? Even better, is it one big screaming downhill like the Revel series, Big Cottonwood, or Jack and Jill? Unless you plan to roll down that hill in a barrel, you need lots of practice running downhill; gravity only does so much. If you don’t live on the side of a mountain, you need access to a treadmill with serious incline/decline functionality. The ability to create a 3 percent grade is all you need.
  • Are you an ultrarunner? Those tend to be on hilly trails. Same logic here as above – unless you live right next to a steep, technical trail you can easily access several times per week, you’re going to need to embrace a treadmill with an incline/decline function. Otherwise, I have no idea how you expect to adequately prepare.
  • For many of my clients with demanding jobs, small children, or visual/auditory impairments, the treadmill in their basement is a solid guarantee that the run will get done. Be it at 4 a.m. before the kids get up or at midnight after that 1-hour video conference (that actually took 3 hours).

If you want more gems of knowledge from Coach MK, check out her Treadmill Tips! And if you’re looking for more wisdom about treadmills from other runners, this blog has you covered.

But we want to hear from you! Are you a treadmill-only runner? A treadmill-never runner? Or somewhere in between?