Ep #318: Treadmill Running Tips

Welcome to The Not Your Average Runner Podcast. If you’ve never felt athletic but you still dream about becoming a runner, you are in the right place. I’m Jill Angie, your fat running coach. I help fat women over 40 to start running, feel confident, and change their lives. I have worked with thousands of women to help them achieve their running goals and now I want to help you.

Hey, hey, my runner friend. Before we dive into this week’s episode, I wanted to let you know that Up & Running is open for registration right now. Up & Running is my beginner’s running class where you get a step by step process to start running in the body you have right now, with my support every step of the way.

You will learn exactly what you need to do to ensure you do it safely and build your confidence. This class has helped literally thousands of fat women start running successfully, because it was created by me, a fat running coach, specifically for fat women who want to start running.

Now, class starts on September 17th and all of the details are over at notyouraveragerunner.com/upandrunning. That’s notyouraveragerunner.com/upandrunning. It is an amazing, amazing program. And I hope that I see you there.

And speaking of Up & Running, one of the most common questions I get from folks who want to do that program is, well, can I do it on a treadmill? And the answer is a resounding fuck yes. And then I realize it’s been a hot minute since I dedicated a podcast episode to talking about treadmill techniques and tips. So I thought, okay, hey, let’s do one.

So here’s the thing, people have a lot of opinions about treadmills. Some people call it the dread mill. Some folks are actually a little afraid of it. Some find it boring as hell. Some people will only run on it if there’s no other option, like there’s two feet of snow on the ground or it’s 110 degrees outside.

And then there’s others who only feel comfortable running on the treadmill. They actually don’t like to run outside because they either don’t want to or they don’t feel confident. Maybe the only time they have to run is four o’clock in the morning and it’s dark out, right? And some people are just really self-conscious about running outdoors.

So whichever of those you are, or maybe you’re somebody who is like, hey, I just like to mix it up. Sometimes I use the treadmill, sometimes I go outside. Whichever you are, you’re going to get something out of today’s episode.

Now, treadmill skills are a very good thing to have in your toolbox. It’s a very handy piece of equipment. And whether you have one in your basement or you belong to a gym, I don’t know, maybe you have a friend who has a treadmill and you can go over and use theirs. Sometimes using the treadmill can make the difference between sticking with your plan or quitting and giving up on yourself. So it’s important to have this skill in your toolbox.

So today, I’m going to cover the basics of running on the treadmill, especially some safety concerns. And then I’m going to answer the most common questions I get about the treadmill, such as why is your GPS not as accurate? Or what to do if you get bored. And whether it’s okay to use the treadmill during race training. Okay? All right.

So, why should you even learn to master the treadmill in the first place? Well, the most obvious is that there’s going to be times when running outside just is not possible. And maybe there’s a crazy thunderstorm during your only running window that day or it’s like five in the morning and it’s dark and you don’t want to run alone out there. And I get it, I get it.

So if you know how to use a treadmill, if you feel confident, you don’t have to miss out on your run. You can just stay on your training schedule and all is going to be fine.

The treadmill is also a great tool to help you become a better runner, because the display tells you exactly how fast you’re going, which makes it a little more easy to sort of dial in your effort on each interval. And you can keep track of your distance easily. It’s a great place to practice your running form without having to worry about am I going to trip over a crack in the sidewalk. You can do hills on a treadmill, right? You can set the incline up.

It’s really, really a versatile piece of equipment. But that practice does require confidence that you’re not going to fall off. And that is the biggest complaint in question that I get from people. And I know there’s a lot of you listening that really don’t have that confidence right now. Or maybe you have fallen off a treadmill in the past and you’re like, fuck that I’m not getting back on that thing.

Or maybe you’ve watched some of those treadmill fail videos that are always on YouTube when somebody trips and faceplants and gets swept right off the back and goes through the drywall or whatever. The thing about those videos, if you’re watching them, is the person on the treadmill has usually made a mistake, right?

So usually they’ve done something stupid and that’s why it has happened. Really it does not happen to most people. So we’re going to talk about some of the safety concerns, right? Like sometimes these people that you see in the treadmill fail videos have hopped on the belt when it’s already going 10 miles an hour and they just get swept right off the back. You’re not going to do that, because you’re smart.

So we’re actually going to dive into some basic safety rules now, because if you follow them there’s absolutely no reason that you should get hurt on the treadmill. There’s absolutely no reason you can’t do your training runs there. So let’s start out with basic safety.

Now, first of all, never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever start the treadmill, start the belt before your feet are on it, okay? You want to make sure that the belt is stationary, and then stand on it. And I want you to square up with the display, stand directly facing the front of the treadmill. And when I say display, I mean that big chunk of plastic that has buttons and numbers and LED lights on it, it’s at the front of the treadmill.

You’re going to familiarize yourself with where are the speed up and down buttons? Where are the incline up and down buttons? Where is that big stop button? And where is the emergency cord? Okay, so figure out where all those things are. You really don’t need to worry about any of the other features, especially if you’re a beginner, right?

The things on the treadmill that concern you are the speed up and down, incline up and down, that big stop button and the emergency cord, okay? So most treadmills have at least two safety features built in because humans are just humans, we have a tendency to do stupid things or we don’t pay attention and manufacturers do not like to get sued.

So treadmills have a built-in safety feature, they have multiple safety features. So when you do something unexpected, the treadmill will have a fail-safe that stops the belt so you don’t get hurt. So I want you to know right now, I don’t know what is happening on all those videos that we see on YouTube, but every treadmill I have ever been on – and I’ve been on a lot of them – has had all kinds of safety features to make sure that I don’t get hurt.

And I am one of the clumsiest people out there. I can trip over dust and fall down. I have never fallen off a treadmill. So, the first safety feature is the emergency cord. Now this is a little cord that has a clip on it on one end, and that end attaches to your clothing. And you can clip this onto your shirt or the waistband of your tights, that’s totally fine. Then the other end of the clip attaches to the machine through a magnet.

And then if you start to get too far back on the treadmill, too far towards the back of the belt, the cord will stretch out and it’ll detach. The magnet will let go, it’ll detach from the machine. And as soon as that magnetic connection is broken, the machine immediately knows to stop the belt. It happens automatically.

So if you’re using this little, usually it’s like a red cord or a red spirally thing. If you’ve got that clipped onto you and you’ve got the magnet attached, if you get too far back, the connection is going to break and the treadmill is going to stop immediately, okay? So that emergency cord, that safety cord is your first line of defense. I have never seen a treadmill without one, it’s probably a law, right?

So I want you, when you are first getting started on a treadmill to use it, okay? And if you’ve been using a treadmill for a long time and you’re really comfortable with it, you might not need to worry too much about the cord. But if you’re a beginner, that cord is just like your water wings when you’re learning to swim, okay?

It’s going to keep you safe in case something goes wrong. Because the way people get really hurt on the treadmill is when the belt keeps going and they land on it. They fall down and they land on it. So the cord, the emergency cord, makes sure that that belt stops immediately. So if you do fall down, you’re not going to be getting treadmill burn on your face. I know that’s very graphic, but that is a fail-safe and it works.

The second important safety feature is that big stop button, okay? It’s going to be red, it’s going to say stop, it should be front and center, right? Probably right near the front handles of the treadmill, somewhere on the display. And if at any time you start to feel unstable, you feel like you’re going to fall or slip, you slam your hand down on that button and it’ll bring the boat right down to zero.

So you don’t need to worry about, you know, yes, you’re going to interrupt your workout, that’s fine, right? Your safety is more important. You don’t need to worry about like, oh, I’ve got to press the down speed button. You’re just going to slam your hand on that button and the belt will stop, okay?

So I hope that makes you feel a little bit better because every treadmill has these features, use them. Some treadmills have other safety features in addition, but you will always have those two things.

So now that you’ve gotten the safety tour, let’s talk about how to start the machine. So you’re going to stand right in front of the display. You’re going to square right up with it. We’re not leaning to one side. We don’t have our feet on the edge rails of the treadmill or on the edge of the belt. You want your feet in the middle of the belt facing the display.

All right, then you’re going to hit the speed up button. There’s going to look like a little up arrow, or maybe a plus sign and the belt is going to start to move slowly. The belt might start going 0.5 miles per hour right away, which is very, very slow. Or it might start out at like 0.1 and you’ll have to hit it a couple more times. But it’ll never go more than 0.5 miles per hour. That’s a half a mile per hour, it will never go faster than that with the first hit of the button.

And I want you to think about it, a half a mile per hour is very slow. If you did this speed for a 5k it would take you six hours to cover five kilometers, okay? It is a half a mile per hour, it is much, much slower than a stroll and it is the perfect speed for you to get used to walking without going anywhere, because that’s what a treadmill is. All right, we are walking and running, we’re not actually going anywhere, so it takes a moment or two for your brain to kind of put that together and kind of understand what’s happening.

So we’re just going to take a few minutes at 0.5 miles per hour, that half a mile per hour. Walk really, really slowly. And you can even hang onto the side rails or the front rails if you want to. The side rails probably make you feel a little bit more stable than the front rails. If you need to do that, go ahead, that’s totally fine. And then just do that for a few minutes.

And then after you start to feel confident, you could take your hands off and see how it feels. But again, we’re still walking at that 0.5 miles per hour. Now, it might feel weird at first. That’s okay. It’s normal, right? Humans didn’t evolve with treadmills. We’ve had treadmills for the past, I don’t know, 50 years, 75 years, maybe longer. But we didn’t evolve. We’ve got 10,000 years of evolution in our brains and we haven’t quite caught up to the last 100 years of inventions.

So if you feel unsteady, remember that it just takes a minute for your brain to understand what’s going on. So, again, if you feel unsteady, keep your head up, keep your gaze up, you want to be looking forward. You don’t want to be looking straight down or spending too much time looking down at the display. Look straight up. So let your body feel like it’s walking.

Again, don’t look down at the belt when you’re moving because your brain is going to get a little confused that the body is not going anywhere, but the feet are moving. It’s kind of like what happens when you try to read in the car and your body can feel the movement, but your brain is seeing the input from your eyes is of no movement because you’re reading. And that creates that sort of feeling of carsickness.

So you want to keep your head up, instead of looking down, all right? Then you’re just going to relax and walk normally. And you might be like, I don’t think I can walk normally. I’m on a treadmill, this feels really scary. It’s okay, you’re going to go half a mile an hour, remember we’re going nice and slow. And I want you to just practice walking normally.

And then once you start to feel confident with that, and maybe you have to come back and try that a few times on the treadmill. Maybe it doesn’t happen on the first day. But once you start to feel confident at that half a mile per hour speed, I want you to bring it up to one mile per hour and then just hang there for a while. Keep your hands off the railings, just get used to it, okay?

And again, if that’s all you do on the first time on your treadmill, totally fine. Then you could go outside, do your regular workout, maybe just call it a treadmill practice session. Maybe you’re going to hop on the elliptical afterwards or the bike or take a strength training class, whatever. Just let yourself get used to it.

Prove to yourself that you can walk on the treadmill without falling off and then end the workout and get off the treadmill and you’re like boom, check done. I got on the treadmill. I walked on it without falling off. And I know that it’s going to be tempting to hold onto the handrails, but I promise you actually don’t need to. After that initial period where you’re getting used to bouncing on the treadmill, your body does know how to walk, right?

And if you’ve ever walked on a moving sidewalk at the airport, you’ve walked on a treadmill, all right? You don’t need to hold on. And this is the same thing, right? It’s very, very natural. The belt is moving, but you’re moving on the belt, right? The only difference between the treadmill and the moving sidewalk is the belt is going in the other direction, but otherwise it’s the same thing.

And I bet if you tried to walk in the opposite direction on a moving sidewalk at the airport, you’d be fine. You wouldn’t get anywhere, but you’d be fine. It would feel totally normal. And again, the only difference between walking the wrong way on a moving sidewalk and walking on a treadmill is that the treadmill is shorter, it’s like three feet long instead of 100 yards long.

So I want you to practice walking on the treadmill without holding on. At least you can hold on maybe for that first minute or two when you get on. And then afterwards, once you’ve got your balance, let go and see what happens. You can even try it for 30 seconds, and then if you’re still scared you can grab the rails again, okay? And then you can work up to maybe a minute or two minutes.

And again, it might take a while to build up your confidence. That’s totally okay. It’s worth it. It’s worth it to master the skill of the treadmill. And as you get more practiced and confident, you can start increasing the speed. And so maybe you get to the point where you’re comfortably walking at like two and a half or three miles per hour. And this is awesome. This is where you realize, oh, I can actually do this.

And that is, like once you have that confidence, then the thought of getting on the treadmill, you’re not quite as scared of it and you get a little more excited about it. It becomes a lot less of an issue. And actually, I almost forgot, here’s another safety tip when you’re on the treadmill. I want you to remember that your body goes where your eyes go. Okay?

So you want to keep your gaze straightforward as much as possible. And this is super helpful if you’re at the gym where they have TVs everywhere, and the TVs are usually up above from the ceiling. That keeps your eyes up, keeps you looking forward. But, this has happened to me in the past, if you go to a gym where the TV is maybe off to the left or the right, that’s going to be creating a few issues for you because you might get a little bit of motion sickness. You might get a crick in your neck, that’s the worst part.

But when your head is turned to the side while your body is trying to move forward, you’re going to start to lean where your head is turned. And that’s when people start to have problems on the treadmill. So I want you to keep your gaze forward.

And also, this is tempting for a lot of people, but I don’t recommend reading on the treadmill because it can really distract you from what you’re doing and cause you to lose focus. And when we lose focus, that’s when accidents happen. It doesn’t really happen when you’re watching TV, because TV doesn’t require as much brain power. You can just sit back and passively consume a TV show.

But a book requires you to think and process. And also books are small and they’re right in front of you and you’ve got to focus on the letters and think about it. So it’s diverting attention away from what you’re doing. And that’s, again, where problems can occur. So I don’t recommend having a book on the treadmill to read, unless you’re going like half a mile an hour, in which case you don’t need all that much brain power.

Okay, now once you’re confident walking, it’s time to do a little bit of running. Just a little bit, that’s it. You can totally, totally do this. So you’re just going to punch the speed up a little bit, little by little, until you need to jog to keep up with the belt. Just a slow jog, we’re not sprinting. And I want you to do that for 15 seconds, bring the speed back down, and then just let your brain evaluate what just happened.

And then once you’ve processed it, you’re like, “Oh my God, I just ran on the treadmill,” you’re going to do it again. You’re going to repeat it a few more times. I can feel you asking me what speed you should use. I can feel your brains right now like, how fast should I go? What setting should I use? I don’t know what I should do.

And what I want you to know is you’re nervous so you’re creating a little bit of confusion for yourself, but the answer is that it just depends on you. So if you’re comfortable walking at three miles per hour, maybe you try to jog at three and a half miles per hour. If you’re comfortable walking at three and a half miles per hour, maybe you punch it up to four or even 4.2. See if that requires you to jog, but if you can keep walking at that pace, then punch it up just a little bit more. Go a little bit at a time.

And when you make this transition, if you need to hold onto the rails, if it helps your confidence, it’s fine, okay? Eventually, you’re going to want to, again, transition away from holding on because that does impact your running form.

Your arms need to be free to move forward and back when you run. If your hands are on the side rails, it’s going to cause you to run funny and not funny that other people are going to be looking at you, but funny like it’s going to throw your back out of alignment. And we don’t want to do that.

So I want you to just practice that slow, comfortable jog until it feels very normal and relaxed. And if it takes time, it takes a while, that’s fine. And you might need to work on your thoughts about it. You might need to remind yourself like, I can do this. I’m learning how to do this. I’m just going to practice. Everybody starts somewhere. Because right now you probably have the thought it’s too hard, I’m going to fall off and I’m scared. And that makes you feel panic.

And when we’re panicked, we don’t operate from a relaxed place. So I just want you to practice the thoughts like, I’m learning this. This is a new skill. A lot of people do this. I’m safe, there’s no reason for me to be worried. I’m getting better at this, okay? Whatever you need to practice in your brain to keep you calm and keep doing it, it’s totally fine. Everybody goes through this when they learn the treadmill.

Now, when you are at the point where you can comfortably walk and run on the treadmill without holding on, it’s time for your first workout, okay? Your first actual running workout. So just like when you’re outside, you’re going to start by walking for five minutes to warm up. And then, at this time I think you should start the treadmill.

I usually recommend when people run outside that they don’t start their Garmin or they don’t start RunKeeper until they’re actually doing their running intervals, I think you should do the same on the treadmill. So do your five minute warm up, stop the treadmill, start it again, and then use that as your workout time, okay?

Or you could just make note of the distance that you covered in your warmup and subtract it out later if you’re going to upload it to RunKeeper, that’s fine. But I think it’s easier to just do your five minute walking warm up, stop the treadmill, start it again, and then use that as your workout time.

So right now, you can use your standard timing app for your intervals, okay? And actually, you can do that forever. You do not need to use a GPS watch. You don’t need to use RunKeeper. You can take the data from the display and enter it into RunKeeper as a manual run.

But really, all you need on the treadmill is something that beeps in your ear saying run and walk and run and walk. You can do that with a gym boss also. And then you are manually going to move the speed up and down at the beginning and end of every interval, okay?

It sounds like it’s going to be a pain in the ass, I promise it’s not. And then once you’re done with your workout, you’re going to stop the treadmill. Start it up, do your cool down walk, bring that belt back to zero, do your stretching and all the things. And don’t forget to wipe everything down with sanitizer if it’s a public machine.

Okay, so those are the basics of running on a treadmill. And if you’ve never done it before because you have thoughts and opinions about it, I really want you to give it a try so that you have one more tool in your toolbox. And if you’re in the Up & Running class, let me know how your treadmill runs are going over in our Facebook group.

So those are the basics of safety and usage. And now I want to address some of the most frequently asked questions I get about the treadmill. So, first of all, sometimes treadmills that are next to each other at the gym do not have the same speed. Like the belts are moving and the display might both say that they’re going at four miles an hour, but the belts aren’t actually moving at the same speed.

And this is because treadmills in public places, and probably in your house, are not always calibrated. So that means that if you go to a different machine every week at the gym, you might notice one day it feels really hard and the next feels really easy even though you’re using the same setting. Honestly, the differences aren’t usually that noticeable, but it can happen.

And so this is why I recommend not getting too wrapped up in what the display on the treadmill says. And instead just go by how your run feels to you. Just lean into the effort instead of being sort of obsessed with the numbers on the display. Or you could just try to use the same treadmill every week. If you go to a public place maybe you can figure out how to make that happen. If you’re on your treadmill at home, it doesn’t matter. You’re using the same one every week, you’re always comparing apples to apples to apples.

Now sometimes people are like, okay, well, if the treadmill is not always going to be 100% accurate, I’ll just use my GPS. And that does not work. The problem with using a Garmin or RunKeeper or your Apple watch, whatever your GPS is, is first of all, when you’re indoors you’re not going to get a GPS signal. So you’re not going to get any kind of an accurate reading.

And even if you could get an accurate signal, GPS, the way it works is it keeps track of you moving from one point to another and it calculates the distance using satellites. And with a treadmill, your position relative to the satellites and the Earth doesn’t change. So even if you had an outdoor treadmill and you could get a beautiful connection, the GPS would still think you’re stationary, okay?

So it’s not going to work right. And even if it’s counting steps, if it’s like a Garmin or an Apple watch that counts your steps, it’ll register that you’re doing something but it’ll get confused because it thinks you’re moving. But obviously, you’re also not moving.

And that’s why you see these crazy Garmin maps or RunKeeper maps sometimes that look like a three year old scribbled all over the place. It’s because the watch is trying to resolve the disconnect between sensing that your body is moving, and also realizing that you’re not actually going anywhere relative to the Earth and the satellites.

Now, if you’re using a foot pod, like a Garmin or a Nike pod in your shoe, you actually can get a more accurate distance on the treadmill if you input your stride length and then it’ll count your number of steps. But you actually have to have the foot pod to do that, otherwise, your GPS is going to tell you nothing about your treadmill run.

So what I usually do with a treadmill run is I just create a manual entry in RunKeeper or in my Garmin Connect app and just input what the treadmill told me, all right? It’s as close as it needs to get. So don’t worry too much about your treadmill stats, don’t try to use your GPS on the treadmill, right?

When you are training for an outdoor race, for example, most of your running is going to be outside. So when you’re on your treadmill, your goal is just to get the time on your feet. That’s really all you’re looking for.

Now, I also want to talk real quick about the elliptical because a lot of you think that the elliptical is an excellent substitute for treadmill training, partly because you have to hold onto the handles. It’s not a substitute. And I know it seems like it should be because the motion is similar, but the elliptical doesn’t ever require your feet to lose contact with the machine, which means it is a no impact activity. And running is a high impact activity and that’s part of the training.

So, I mean, the elliptical is fine if you want to sneak in an extra cardio workout or if you’re injured and you can’t do high impact right now because your doctor is like, “Please don’t do that.” Then the elliptical is fine, but it is not a substitute for running. It’s just another cardio machine, okay? And I would not bother with it unless you absolutely have to.

So how often should you train on a treadmill? This is another big question I get. Now in my opinion, if you’re doing an outdoor race, you should be doing as much training outside as possible. That being said, there’s going to be times that the treadmill is the best option regardless.

So all of my clients, I tell them that a good rule of thumb is to plan for your long runs to be outside. And then plan those long runs on a day when you can get outside. And then if you need to run on the treadmill, you can do that once or twice a week but make sure those are for your short runs.

That’s the ideal situation. And I recognize that it’s not always going to happen that way, but that’s what you can aim for. And running outside, it feels different, right? I know people who have trained for entire 5K’s or 10K’s on a treadmill and they show up for their race and the race is outdoors. And they’re like, “Wow, that was a lot harder than I thought.”

And I’m like, yeah, because you have wind resistance and hills and you have weather and you have all kinds of stuff outside and it takes practice. You can’t get that experience just from running on a treadmill, especially if the incline is set to zero. You can simulate outdoor conditions a little tiny bit by setting the incline on a treadmill to one or 2%. But in general, if you’re running a race outside, you need to do as much as you can of your running outdoors.

So that’s why I say that the treadmill is a tool in your toolbox. But it’s not the only tool, it is just one tool, okay? But if you have no intention of ever doing an outdoor race, feel free to do all of your running on a treadmill if you want. That’s totally fine.

And then the last thing I want to talk about is the treadmill being boring. I hear this all the time. They’re like the treadmill is so boring. They call it the dread mill, right? They’re like, I’d rather stick a fork in my eye than run on the treadmill. Here’s the thing though, boring is an emotion. Boring is not a fact. The treadmill is not boring. You are boring on the treadmill. That is it. That is the honest truth. I’m laying it down for you right here. This is some tough love.

I mean, I get it, there’s not as much to look at when you run inside. The only thing you get to look at is either somebody always seems to put golf on one of the TVs, there’s other people who are sweaty, probably kind of grimacing or whatever, they’re not super fun to look at. There’s no fresh air. It’s not the most visually diverse of environments, okay? But all of that is simply the circumstance, okay?

You could run on the treadmill and think your shitty thoughts about how bored you are or how mad you are that you got to run the treadmill instead of running outside, whatever your shitty thoughts are. But I suspect that that way of thinking is going to mean that you end up skipping more workouts than you want.

So I want you to know the treadmill is not boring. The treadmill is just a bunch of metal and plastic and wires, okay? It is you who is boring on the treadmill. And you could always change up your thinking so you don’t end up feeling bored.

So here’s a great example, right now we are in one of the hottest summers on record. Climate change is real, my friends. Some places in the US at least are seeing temperatures well above 110 degrees Fahrenheit. I think the highest one I saw was like 119. That’s like 43, 44, 45 degrees Celsius. That is fucking hot.

So I’ve been hearing a lot of the following statements. “It’s too hot to run outside and I hate the treadmill, so I missed three training runs. What do I do?” Okay, so this is the problem that people will come with. It’s too hot outside. I hate the treadmill, I keep skipping my workouts. I’ve got a race coming up, I’m screwed. What do I do?

So here’s what you got to do. You have a few choices. I think the easiest one is to just get over it, right? Yes, it’s hot outside. That’s a fact. You also have a race to train for. So I think you have three options here. You can run at 3:000 in the morning when it’s only 80 degrees and there’s no sun beating down on you, okay? You can get your ass on the treadmill and do your miles. Or you could have a pity party, you could skip a bunch of training runs and have a shitty race.

Those are the options, right? So being bored on the treadmill is just drama in your head. Seriously, it is your inner toddler throwing a fit because she’s not getting what she wants. The problem is what you keep saying to yourself. You keep saying, “I don’t like the treadmill. It’s so boring. I can only do a mile before I quit.” And when you say that to yourself, you feel terrible, you feel bored. Of course you feel bored, right? I would feel bored.

So stop torturing yourself. Here’s the thing, if I offered you a million dollars to do 10 miles on a treadmill, I am pretty sure you would enjoy every fucking minute. There would be no whining or complaining, there would be only smiling and imagining what you’re going to do with your money because in that case the treadmill is the path to what you want. In this case, what you want is a million dollars.

But the treadmill is also the path that something else that you want, which is running your goal race like a boss. So you’ve got to change your thinking about the treadmill. I mean, I just gave you that example because when you think the treadmill is boring, when you think that’s the circumstance, you don’t give yourself any leeway, right?

If you think you have to be forced to run, you’re like there’s got to be some magic formula because this sucks, right? But the magic formula is your thinking. If the treadmill was boring, and I offered you that million dollars to do 10 miles on the treadmill, you wouldn’t be bored. I guarantee you wouldn’t be bored. You’d be counting that money in your head.

That’s how we know it’s your thoughts, and not the treadmill. So you’ve got to change your thinking around the treadmill, all right? So here’s some examples. You can think I’m so happy to have access to a treadmill, so I keep training even in a heat wave. I mean, that’s an easy thought to think, right?

This treadmill means I don’t have to miss a single training run. I don’t have to worry about sunburn and heatstroke. If I don’t want to run hills, I don’t have to run hills, I can run perfectly flat. Running on the treadmill means I can binge watch Netflix, I can get my workout in at the same time. I’m being efficient, right?

So you get the picture, you’ve got to change your thinking about that machine so that you’re not bored because the treadmill is not boring. You are just boring on the treadmill. Don’t be boring on the treadmill.

All right, actually I think we’re going to do one more question. So the final question that I want to talk about today is how to not sound like an elephant when you’re running on the treadmill. Here’s the truth, everyone sounds like an elephant, I promise. You don’t sound any louder than anyone else. I know you’re like, “No, no, you don’t understand. I do” But you don’t. You’re just closer to the sound of your running, so it seems louder.

And you might be wearing headphones, so you actually can’t even hear the other people. And you’re creating this drama in your head about it when everybody sounds like an elephant on the treadmill. Nobody sounds like a gazelle on the treadmill. It’s a thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk. It’s a loud noise right?

Now, if it feels to you, like you’re running heavy physically, you’re probably maybe landing a little bit harder on your heels. That is normal, it happens a lot, especially when you’re switching from outdoor to indoor running and the treadmill belt kind of changes your gait a little bit. So play around with running lighter.

You can try practicing running on your tiptoes, right? Not for your whole run and not at full speed, but just for a little bit. So slow the belt down, run on your tiptoes and get a feel of how it feels to land lighter, okay? It might help your brain click a little bit on how to sort of land lighter. And it is something you need to practice.

Another technique is to focus on landing on the middle part of your foot instead of your heel, this is going to force you to land a little bit lighter. And you can just practice this, right? You don’t even have to be running too fast, right? You can just set the belt at a speed that feels a little bit on the slow side for you, and then practice a different way of landing, okay? Shorter steps are going to help you land lighter. Faster steps are going to help you land lighter, again, but it’s something you’ve got to practice.

So if you’re not having any issues with the way you’re landing, other than your brain saying people think I sound like an elephant, there’s no problem. But if you want to switch it up, there are things that you can practice.

And now, one last thing, what other people think about how you run is none of your business. So there might be people out there that think, “Oh my God, she sounds like an elephant.” That’s all right, you do you, you let them do them. We do not care if other people think we land heavy on the treadmill. That is fine. They can think that. You do you.

And honestly, my friends, running is like 10% physical and 90% managing your mind. And the treadmill is such a great example of that, right? So if you’ve got drama about the treadmill, start with your brain. Practice the techniques that I showed you or I talked about in today’s episode, but start with your brain. Start with your thinking about it, okay?

I hope this was helpful to you. And, again, if you want to start running, let’s get you signed up for Up and Running. The next class starts on September 17th, you can sign up over at notyouraveragerunner.com/upandrunning, and I will see you there.

All right, my friend, I hope this has been a very helpful episode for you. If you liked it, please share it on Instagram and let people know. I love you. Stay safe and get your ass out there and run.

Real quick, before you go, if you enjoyed this episode, you have to check out Run Your Best Life. It’s my monthly coaching program where you will learn exactly how to start running, stick with it, and become the runner you have always wanted to be. Head on over to runyourbestlife.com to join. I would love to be a part of your journey.