Get Movin' Monday: How To Spice Up Treadmill Running

MNNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- It's time to get moving on this Monday, and this week we are tackling treadmill running.

Many avid runners think running on a stationary machine can be extremely boring. We tracked down a professional runner and running coach at Life Time Fitness to find some ways to make running on the treadmill more fun and not so routine.

"Running on a treadmill isn't about getting on, setting the speed and then just going for an hour. You can, but if you're going to come spend time on it, why not have a purpose and a goal?" said Katie McGregor with Life Time Fitness. "I put together a little training program. You'll feel better putting in a little more effort for the day."

She said start with a warm-up, starting at a pace where you feel like you could easily pick something up. The first workout is called the threshold-steady state workout.  You do it five minutes on, one minute off t a total of four to six times.

"If we were starting the threshold workout, you want to go to a pace where it's hard but you could still talk. Then hold this for five minutes," McGregor said. "You don't want it so hard because you only have a minute recovery."

McGregor said the threshold training it's all about keeping a steady state so we don't rest too much in between intervals.

The next workout is called the 5, 4, 3, 2 ,1.

"This is one of my favorite workouts. It's fun, you get faster as you go, and it's super time efficient. You don't even realize that 30 minutes has gone by," McGregor said.

You should be starting at a pace where it's hard to talk. Do that for five minutes, then drop down to a jog for five minutes. Then go to four, where you bump it up to faster than what you were running for the five but doing so for a shorter time.

By the time you get to one, you are running as fast as you possibly can.

McGregor gave us one more workout called incline sprints.  Bump the incline up to six and sprint for 30 seconds.  Reduce incline and recovery jog for 90 seconds. Repeat that eight to 10 times, increasing the incline and/or speed as you get more comfortable.