Doman Running Program Update (Physical Excellence Friday)

I know it’s cliche.

Treadmills in January.

But whatever the matter of cultural trends may be, we are back at running this week. However, this time in the slightly-less-than-ideal location of our garage.

I know, I know. The Doman running program is ideally conducted outside. More interesting, fresh air, the works.

But lately the I have had to give up the “all or nothing” mindset and settle for “pretty good”.

See, I have been working a lot lately. Eighteen hours a day, to be exact.

And when I have a house full of daycare kids, all day, every day, the idea of going out for a run is a little bit more trouble than it should be. And we just simply haven’t been doing it, the majority of the time.

But we did a little rearranging in the garage this past weekend, plugged in the nine-year-old treadmill that someone gave us recently, and ran.

We are starting small. Easy. This is what it looks like right now:

• I run first (for 20 minutes) while he watches and does other exercises (aka plays around)

• He then runs. Two minutes of walking (3 miles per hour), two minutes of running (5 miles per hour), repeat (for 20 minutes).

• At this rate he gets about 2.7 miles in within twenty minutes.

• I monitor him very closely. Like within arms length. Kids + treadmills can invariably spell disaster, so this is something to be careful about. As you can see he also has the emergency stop pull-string on, which shuts down the whole machine the moment anything goes wrong (and also the moment anything doesn’t go wrong – it’s pretty sensitive).

• We have fun with it. He loves “working out”, especially since it’s something dad does. He also is pretty keen on getting to use adult equipment.

I am going to go ahead and make a 10-mile nonstop goal for the end of the year, for both Hunter and I. We will see how it goes.

“When thou goest, thy steps shall not be straitened; and when thou runnest, thou shalt not stumble.”

Proverbs 4:12

Hunter is 6 years, 9 months old