new parent. need to alter training in creative way. help me out.

Long day, tempo day, interval day. Your long day could be pushing a stroller, most of us did that.

Focus on the 5K for a few years.

Dont you have a few months with payment to stay home with your kid or is it not normal in your country? Here many study or train when they get kids because they still get paid :)

If you dont then you should do one long run, one long run with tempo in it or long tempo and one interval.

suck it up and buy a treadmill. I never wanted one, but once I had kids to take care of I decided it was my only option. I wound up buying a curve (xebex model) and actually love it! Its been a life saver when it comes to making the most of limited time because of family, weather, work etc.

The curved treadmill is great for workouts, long runs, and for low impact injury preventative running. Good luck

liamthedog wrote:

I have an small child at home. I can only get 3 runs in per week, generally on days I work and/or when both my wife and I are off from work together. Other days its just me and the baby, so I cannot get out and go anywhere further than the monitor will allow. I looking for ways to continue to train without being able to get out for a run. I really don't want to buy a treadmill or a running stroller at the moment. if it helps, 5k-10k is where my training would be geared towards. Thanks

My kids are teens now, which has allowed me to ramp up my mileage a lot. But when they were babies, a treadmill and running stroller were essential. If you don't want to go that route, another thing that helped is essentially trading time with the wife. "If I watch the kid for an hour while you do ______, will you watch the kid while I go for a run?"

Between work and family, my running a back seat for about 12 years, and I don't regret that one bit. Only in the past two years have I been able to dedicate a lot of time to it, again.

This ^

We spent years alternating kidwatching on weekend days, while one or the other of us went out for a few hours. This sometimes included a 5K race for me, or for the other person. A treadmill was a lifesaver, too, and we even kept it around when the kids were high school age - it came in handy an awful lot.

Evenings same deal. A lot of 9 p.m. dinners.

Running at 5AM and/or 9PM

Treadmill

Yogging Stroller

Neglect your children

Get fat

Those are the realities of having young chosen for a runner.

Take a 20yr break from running and work on your kids education and athletic career.

1) Bob running stroller. I know you said you don’t want one, but parenthood is your new normal and a BOB is freedom to train. In retrospect, I loved the time running with my son. Bring lots of snacks that take a long time for your little one to eat, so they don’t burn through them too fast.. A plastic garbage bag to cover their lower half when it rains. Make it fun by ending your run at a playground or at ice cream. Jogging with a stroller is a pain but it also makes you stronger, especially up hills.

2) On the days you can’t get out, half an hour of abs or do a stationary bike or treadmill. I used a treadmill and didn’t lose much condition.

3) In a pinch, I would put my toddler in a safe pen, put on a Disney movie and do 800s or 400s in front of my house, checking him every 5-10 minutes. I’m sure the neighbors found it strange.

4) Once he was over a year or so, I got a key to the local track. It was perfect because it was fenced and if he was in the middle, I could see him the whole time. I would set him up with toys, and later, a treat and would run my workouts around him.

The sooner you find ways to incorporate your kid into your workouts, the more they accept it as their routine and won’t fight you. My son would love to watch me race because he was part of my training “team.” Now, my son is 12 and chooses to run with me every other day, because he thinks it’s fun.

1980s wrote:

Running at 5AM and/or 9PM

Treadmill

Yogging Stroller

Neglect your children

Get fat

I went with getting fat and neglecting my children (not for running, but for education and work). I now wish I had spent the money on a good jogging stroller. It would have been a good investment.

My habit became doing 3-4 runs a week at 9pm after kids in bed, wife home. One those was usually a long tempo on bike path. Long run early Sun morning, club workout Tue evening. Wif

When I was in your situation the following workout enabled me to maintain a remarkable level of fitness. I’d run a 2 mile brisk warmup, stepping down to sub 6:00 pace on the way to the HS track. Change into spikes, then 8 x 100m working it, not junk striders, right into a 400m all out. Jog home. Total about 4 miles in 30 minutes.

Supplemented this with easy runs of an hour on trails whenever I could get them in. On this program I was able to race effectively up to 10k.

Like someone says, using a stroller if the kid shall sleep anyway works well doing easy runs. You could even put in some hillwork with the stroller as well. That could give more options. But else from that I think a treadmill is the best thing.

For me, during my kids’ newborn stages, I just ran when I could and accepted that I couldn’t train as I normally did. Once they were on a regular schedule of sleeping through the night I would bolt out the door once they were in bed.

I’d also suggest focusing on weightlifting now. It’s good for you, it can be done at home and it will help your running once your kid gets older and you have more time to train.

I like these ideas:

3) In a pinch, I would put my toddler in a safe pen, put on a Disney movie and do 800s or 400s in front of my house, checking him every 5-10 minutes. I’m sure the neighbors found it strange.

4) Once he was over a year or so, I got a key to the local track. It was perfect because it was fenced and if he was in the middle, I could see him the whole time. I would set him up with toys, and later, a treat and would run my workouts around him.

brrr! wrote:

I like these ideas:

3) In a pinch, I would put my toddler in a safe pen, put on a Disney movie and do 800s or 400s in front of my house, checking him every 5-10 minutes. I’m sure the neighbors found it strange.

4) Once he was over a year or so, I got a key to the local track. It was perfect because it was fenced and if he was in the middle, I could see him the whole time. I would set him up with toys, and later, a treat and would run my workouts around him.

Please do not do these OP because they’re not safe. Especially #3. You need to be close to a toddler at all times.

You’re gonna be buying/finding a “running stroller” for general use anyway, so I hope this isn’t a cost savings thing.

If you don’t want a stroller or a treadmill it honestly sounds like your running is going to be put on the back burner.

You need to be creative, nimble, and grateful for whatever time you can get. It’s really hard to plan anything when you have young ones. You’re gonna be sick more, tired more, frustrated more. Treadmills and strollers are a partial workaround.

Winning road races pushing my autistic 10 yo son is more rewarding than any of my PRs.

The people here have already given some great advice. Some things that worked for me:

- jogging strollers for long runs during the little one's nap time were great. The longer they napped, the longer my run was.

- Back when I was actually going into the office to work, 5 mile lunch break runs were clutch. I was lucky enough to have a shower at my office. Since those had to be about 40 min max (to give me time to shower, change, and get back to my desk) those were often hard intervals or tempo runs. Actually, for anybody in a WFH situation, I guess this is still entirely possible and even easier.

- For doubles, I'd drive into work early, do a run before work and then another on my lunch break. Made it pretty easy to get in 10 miles for the day and not mess with my schedule too much.

- At a certain point, I simply had to choose sleep or training. It wasn't sustainable, so once a month or so, I'd pick a week when I knew I just wasn't going to sleep much and I'd get up early every day and put in tons of miles. The following week I'd take as recovery and sleep to make up for the previous week. It was tough, but I did get into amazing shape.

Good luck!

Not sure where your aversion to a treadmill and a running stroller comes from, but those should be the first two things on your list.

I’m confused, you only work 2 days a week?

You said you can run three days a week, on the days you work or you and your wife are both home, so I’m just confused about your daily schedule?

My advice would be to run commute.

Nearly all of my midweek running is run commuting home from work. The run is about 20 minutes longer than my commute generally, which saves me 40 minutes and means I am home and ready to eat by 7 rather 8.