My wife was away the past few day so I was on Daddy duty. My treadmill kept calling, and to be honest I snuck in a 5k while the kiddos watched some tv. But I couldn’t bring myself to run on the treadmill at night because I didn’t want one of the kids to wake up scared and me not be able to hear them. Saturday i didn’t run, but Sunday…
The house was a disaster from the day with a 5 and 7 year old. The dishes needed to be unloaded and reloaded, there was laundry to put away, and the toy room – WOW.
Instead of doing a classic tidy I decided to incorporate a run. I took my socks off and started running on the spot, grabbed a towel from the dryer and ran it upstairs and put it away. Back downstairs for the next towel – up a flight of stairs to put it away.
I cleaned the house while running barefoot all over the house. 10k with an elevated heart rate while cleaning the house! I purposely did things to get in the distance; put away 1 cup, run downstairs to put away 1 toy in the playroom, back up to the kitchen for another cup out of the dishwasher, back downstairs…for an hour and a half I just kept my legs moving, basically jogging on the spot.
My watch was set to treadmill mode because I didn’t think the GPS would track all my movements especially if I was running on the spot. It seemed to work, but really who cares if the distance is bang on. Elevating my heart rate and spending the time on my feet is more important than an exact distance.
I think running barefoot through the house trying to be quiet and not wake up the kids is a great way to run technically. Landing had to be soft which means a forefoot landing. Running on the spot keeps the landing under the hips.
I went from being bummed out because I missed my runs to being satisfied that I was able to squeeze in 10k while getting the house ready for mommy to get home!