Since the weather was so gorgeous on Sunday, I decided to go for a run on the Silver Comet Trail and have one of our younger daughters tag along.
She needed to take a nap – and wouldn’t fall asleep willingly – and it gave me the chance to use our BOB running stroller for its intended purpose for the first time.
My traveling companion, at the outset:
A map of “our” run:
[gpsies fileId=fvkpxtywmqbaphlh show=full]
My traveling companion, at the completion (She actually fell asleep around mile 2):
Three advantages of running & pushing a stroller:
- You can forget about your own mental hangups or negative talk while you’re trying to make sure your kid is OK & having fun
- Holding the stroller with both hands virtually guarantees you’ll have little to no wasted arm motion
- Having the stroller in front of me forced me to take faster, shorter strides. It’s not reflected in the data above but I averaged about 4-6 more strides per minute than normal. (A cadence of 85 versus my normal cadence of 80-82)
Three unforeseen consequences:
- Sweaty, cramped hands from having to hang on to the neoprene handles
- The stroller acting like a huge sail/baffle to slow me down (should’ve been obvious but was much worse than that, or so it seemed)
- Passing slower runners – not normally an issue for a single runner, but the stroller is a double stroller so I had to time things out just right so I didn’t hit oncoming traffic or the folks in my lane
All in all it was a very successful run, aided mainly by the company and the weather. I’ll be doing it again soon.