Don't put baby in a corner, put her in a jogger!

In this issue of Runner's World 

I read an article about a woman, Christina Lee, (on the cover it turns out) who ran cross country while pushing a 70 pound jogger. When I told my wife about this she said, "Wow! You're pretty close to pushing that weight when you run with the little one." Hmmm.... let me look deeper into this! I never even thought that running with my toddler in the jogger could be a benefit for my runs. I did notice that it was much harder to run with her as she got older and heavier but I knew that would happen.  

Right around the time this issue came out I was telling my wife that I wanted one of those small parachutes to do some drills with to help me get faster. 

She also suggested I try running with a weight vest (you'll remember that from a previous post). But not wanting to spend more money on things that I would use sparingly and take up space I took another look at running with the jogger.

I started paying close attention to my runs with the jogger and the runs without. And holy fish sticks Batman, there IS a difference! First let's look at the stats.

1. My toddler weighs about 30 lbs.
2. My B.O.B. jogger weighs 25 lbs.

In total I am pushing 55 pounds when I'm running and when you add a head wind that adds additional weight. I don't know how much weight a head wind can add but it feels like I'm pushing about 80 pounds. That's only a guess though.

Then I checked my handy dandy running diary and there it was in black and white. A 30-45+ second reduction in my pace when I ran without the stroller. So here are some more stats:

1. Running with the jogger my average pace would be between 9:15 and 9:30/mile.
2. Running with the jogger in a head wind my pace ranged from 9:45 to 10:15/mile.
3. No jogger and my pace was anywhere between 8:40 and 8:20/mile with very little strain or effort. I might even call it an easy run if I was feeling high and mighty.

A friend of mine has a double jogger and puts her 8 month old and three year old in it and she also notices a huge difference. I didn't get the details of her runs but her expression certainly showed me that the difference was noticeable.

So to all the mommies out there running with your kids in the jogger, getting your mileage in, know that you have an upper hand with your training. And if you don't happen to have any kids maybe you can do what Christina Lee did and buy a jogger and stick some weights in it. I just wouldn't recommend borrowing someone's kid.