Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

The thought of just getting on the treadmill and running without a television, mp3 player or other distraction sounds like an exercise in meditation to me, and quite frankly it is. If you find that you have been dying of boredom on the treadmill lately, here are some ideas to keep things interesting.

• Meditation: Many runners say that running is more important than religion to them. They achieve a sense of peace while running that they have never felt anywhere else. I’m not one of those runners, but trying meditation techniques while running on the treadmill is something that runners have been using for years. Click here for some examples of meditations: Beliefnet.com Meditations

• Work Out Your To-Do List: Other runners say that the hour they spend running saves them hours during the rest of the day because they are able to put together a to-do list. Keep a pad of paper and pencil near the treadmill so you can write down the important things that come to your mind while you’re running. It’s just something that you can’t do when you’re running outside.

• Music: Playing music while I’m running is one of my favorite distractions. The beat of the music is very helpful to keep my running at a good pace. Right now, I run with an iPod Nano, but over the years I have run with skip-free CD players, radios and tape players. Music has kept my feet moving for years.

• Television: Television has gotten Mike on the treadmill every weekday for months on end. We tape our favorite television shows and only watch them when we are exercising. This particular setup was very easy. The shelf and shelf brackets are premade and bought at a hardware store for less than 20 bucks. The television/DVD player was more expensive because it’s so small. It cost us about $250 when it was new a year and a half ago. For under 300 bucks, you can have a personal viewing studio right in front of your treadmill.

Between these few techniques, I am rarely bored when I’m running on my treadmill. When the weather is nice, I love to run outside, but when I’m trapped inside, I have lots to keep me from dying of boredom.