Running with a newborn in the winter has proven to be a little difficult.  First you have the lack of sleep and continual state of exhaustion.

Then you have the whole timing issue.  I did my first run when she was about 2 weeks old.  My in-laws were hear, Christy was feeding Nadia and on Thanksgiving evening, I just decided to go for a run.  I wasn’t super exhausted and we had extra support.  It was 8pm.   Before Christy went back to work, I could have gotten up in the morning for a run but was tired and 6am was hard enough to get up and get ready for work.  I was able to sneak out on the weekends a little better, but I needed to do my share of the load around here too and that meant letting Christy sleep. Now the alarm goes off around 5am and Christy does her thing and I’m on duty by 6am.  Yuck.  I guess I could get out at 5am, but its been cold.

Yes, the issue is confounded by the Minnesota Winter.  Remember this -15 morning? Not really conducive for pushing the jogging stroller.  Though if it warms up past 30 I might get out there.  Sure we have a wind and waterproof, fleece lined, arctic bundler, but I’m not brave enough to risk having the cops arresting me for child endangerment!

Ah, a perfect solution I thought. Run at the Metrodome. So I asked regular attender @steveinaspeedo if I could bring a jogging stroller.  He found out that I could bring the stroller inside the Dome, but I’d have to leave it at the front table.  I doubted the security guards at the table would take care of Nadia while I ran, so scratch that off the list.

One last chance, our YWCA.  Their baby philosophy can be found here.  And works out for us.

Infants Under 6 Months Old

Children ages 0-6 months are welcome at the YWCA! At 6 months, infants can be added to your family membership; can use the babysitting service and when they get a little older can attend classes with parents! Until that time, there are options for your baby:

• Workout Next to Baby: Infants can be in car seats on the fitness floor next to parents who are using fitness machines. For safety, we ask that infants are not in the free weight areas.

Walk Baby in Climate Control: Stroller walkers are welcomed to walk the Midtown track Mon.- Fri. 5:30 am – 4:00 pm; and Sat-Sun 7:30 am – 12:00 pm. For safety, we ask that infants are not carried on the track in any type of carrier.

We’ve done this once and it worked really well.  But you can only do cardio and during peak times only 30 minutes.  So I’ve made it a few times.  A final confounding factor is that we only have one working car!  So it is quite a pain to haul Nadia in her car seat the several blocks to the bus that will take us to the gym.  I need to suck it up and do it!

Do you have any tips or places we could run together?