Treadmills can be a godsend when there’s snow and ice, or when you don’t have time to run or walk during daylight hours, or just don’t have a safe, suitable place to do so. But, they can also bore you to tears and sabotage your workouts. Here are three great ways to add some variety and stave off boredom.

Interval Training

There are several great things about interval training, both from a fitness standpoint and in terms of staying entertained. Interval training is when you alternate between brief bursts of increased intensity and longer periods of recovery, or less intensity. On the treadmill, you can do this either by increasing your speed, or by increasing the incline, to make your activity more or less challenging. Try alternating between the two, either within a workout or between workouts.

This not only gives you a better cardiovascular workout and a better calorie burn, but also gives you something else to focus on besides just putting one foot in front of the other. One of my favorite ways to do intervals on the treadmill? I pick up the pace during commercials, either on the radio or on television. This is great, unless you don’t have access to either at your treadmill or you’re listening to public radio. Another alternative is to watch the clock; you might want to jog easy for four minutes, and speed up for one. Or, just play it by ear. When you feel ready to really hit it, go for it, and dial it down when you need to. Above all, really the only rule here is to tailor your intervals to your level of fitness. Make your intense intervals challenging for you, not what you think you should be able to do.

Fun With MP3 Players

Podcasts are one of the best tools out there to add variety & entertainment to your tread mill workouts. If you go to the iTunes Store, click on Podcasts, and search for running, the options abound. For example, Running Mate is a free podcast that guides you through various intervals set to upbeat music. Podrunner is great for this as well, and is also free.

Or, perhaps you’d simply like to add some learning to your time on the treadmill? The podcasts from How Stuff Works, such as Stuff You Should Know and Stuff You Missed In History Class, are fantastic. There are also podcasts to help you learn foreign languages, how to become a model, podcasts from Purdue and NASA on physics, and on and on.

Wish you could read while on the treadmill? Both iTunes and Audible.com have an abundance of audio books you can easily load onto your MP3 player. Everything from Stephen King to Stephen Hawking. You can also “read” on the treadmill more cheaply by checking out audio books from your local library.

Whatever you choose, use your material to help you achieve goals. Running podcasts are often geared to reaching distance goals. Your “reading” material can be easily used to reach time or distance goals. I personally love using the This American Life podcast from NPR for this. I absolutely LOVE this podcast, so I only let myself listen to it when I get on the treadmill and I tell myself I have to keep going for the whole episode (usually about 45 minutes). This works EXCELLENTLY for me.

Sprints

This killer workout is one I learned from Noah Keats, head of Rock Sport personal training in Seattle, Washington. Fair warning, this workout is for those with healthy legs and a good couple months of running under their belt. Think of this as interval training on steroids. Here’s how we did it.

Warm up thoroughly with a four or five minute jog, or walking with a 10% incline. Give yourself a minute, and then grab the rails and hop off the belt, so that your feet are resting on the strips to the side of the belt. Now, crank up the speed. Really crank up the speed. Then for 30 seconds or a full minute, get your feet moving on the belt then let go of the rails and run hard. At the end of the minute, grab the rails and hop back off to rest for a minute.

It can be a little awkward to hop on and off the belt. Two tricks for you. First, if you keep on foot off the belt and use the other one to just get a feel for how fast it’s moving by setting it on the belt lightly and letting it carry it back a little, just four or five times. The last time you do this, actually hop on, get your legs going, and let go of the rails. Second, it’s a good idea to try hopping on and off the belt at a much lower speed, without letting go of the rails, and then with letting go of the rails, before you do this.

Now, when Noah had me doing these, my ultimate goal was to work up to being able to do 12 full-minute sprints in a row with one minute of rest in between, with the belt at 10 mph. I think I only ever got up to six or seven in a row before my training was side tracked by illness. Sprints are one of the most challenging, butt kicking, intense cardio workouts I’ve ever done. The first time I finally got to four 10 mph sprints in a row, I know I felt like I might be sick. But, I got serious results from adding these to my rotation of workouts, and as someone who normally ran 11 minute miles at the time (about 5.5 mph), I also got a serious feeling of accomplishment and faster miles as I kept doing them. Highly recommended, just use caution and listen to your body. Again, tailor this to your fitness level. Don’t over do it! But do push yourself. This is not a workout for every day, more like one to three times a week. Try starting out with three or four 7 mph sprints for 30 seconds each, which is where I started.