Since I’ve been stuck inside the house so much over the past few weeks, I decided that my gym space needed a makeover and spent a couple of hours updating/cleaning up the space around my treadmill. I think its important to have a small oasis that is completely yours in your home, especially when you’re sharing with family and you can’t really escape. I shared home gym area on a few running groups and received an overwhelming response of love towards my little happy place that I thought it would be fun to talk about different ways of decorating/ personalizing your home running space.
Find a Space that Works for You
My treadmill lives out in the garage for two reasons. First, because I can open the garage door and still get a semblance of being outside when its cold or rainy. You would be surprised how warm the inside stays during the winter compared to the street, even with the door open. I’m able to get a little fresh air with having my treadmill in the garage. Second, and what is the real reason, my treadmill is old and heavy and my significant other refused to help me try to lift it up the stairs after having struggled getting it down the stairs of my townhome when I moved out.
If you notice, I don’t really have a TV set up to watch with this set up. (I’ll get to how I fix that in a bit.) For you, a spare bedroom or a corner of a living room might work better. You can set up a big box fan and watch some great tv shows to pass the time.
Make it Functional: Entertainment and Work
Let’s be honest. Treadmill runs can be BORING. A little entertainment can go a long way to making the time go by faster. I originally was setting my phone down near the speed buttons and tried watching shows on it that way. This lead to me having bad neck aches and bad running form because I was looking down for long periods of time. After some searching around Amazon, I found this Phone Holder clamp (Below Left) . It holds my phone in place right at eye level so that I can watch Netflix and still keep good running form.
For work meetings, I’ve never been good at sitting still. At some point I want to set up a walking desk that I can actually type at. (Fun fact: I wrote at least half of my Ph.D. dissertation on my boss’s fancy walking desk.) However, these treadmill desks can be expensive, but propping my old laptop up on the top of my treadmill has worked so far for at least meetings. You can even see my gaming headset that I wear, since my older treadmill is a bit loud. The microphone is better equipped to only pick up my voice, that way my coworkers don’t have to hear the background noise.
A Kickass Medal Display
Any runner that participates in races accumulates Finisher’s Medals. My first few hung on the doorknob to my bedroom for a long time until I received my first medal display hanger. I love the idea of them hanging next to my treadmill for extra motivation.
While my Marathon Finisher medals are on a display in another part of the house (I don’t have good pictures of that one, but it has a cool chalkboard area where you can write your PRs. I haven’t updated it in about a year or so, so it is woefully out of date) I have two hangers next to the treadmill that I absolutely love. First, is my She Believed She Could So She Did hanger, with mostly medals from 2019. I ran so many more races last year that it really needed its own hanger.
The second medal hanger I have up is my Bib Display. Since I have a bib wall now, I don’t really use it to hold a lot of bibs, but if you’re lacking space it’s a great way to store them. I keep my “In Memory Of” bib stored here so that I can see it everyday. I had this special bib pinned to my back during the marathon I ran as a St. Jude Hero in honor of my father, who passed away from stomach cancer the year prior. Having something that means so much to me right next to my treadmill also gives me a little bit more encouragement, especially since my dad was always one of my biggest cheerleaders. Consider putting up a few momentos that have strong personal meaning to help motivate you through your treadmill runs.
Use Old Bibs as Art (The Bib Wall)
The bib wall is a great use of space next to your treadmill, but can be a bit tricky to get right. If you’re anything like me, you have a stack of bibs from past races sitting somewhere. First thing, I did was remove all those safety pins, drink/bag tabs, and organize the race bibs by size. I find that the Rock n’ Roll Marathon series are by far the largest bibs while local bibs can end of being a bit smaller. Once I had them organized by size, I started placing them on the wall. I originally used scotch tape along the back of bibs, until I found a layout that I liked. Since bibs have a varying size, this helped me to play with layout before committing. Once I had a layout, I used white thumbtacks in the corner holes.
In Summary, that’s how I personalized my happy place in the garage. It’s a little haven away from the rest of the house where I can go to relax and run. It really motivates me to have all my running paraphernalia out where I can see and enjoy it. I hope this helps in putting together your own treadmill space!
Running for Beers 