I get a lot of questions about my treadmill desk and how it works. All of the treadmill desks that I looked at were pretty expensive, and I didn’t know if I would really even use one. So my husband and I decided that we would try to build one using an older treadmill that we didn’t feel comfortable running on anymore.

In the first picture you can see the basic setup. We basically drilled 2 shelf brackets ($7 each at Home Depot) into the top of the treadmill and placed a wireless keyboard mouse on top of a plain wood shelf ($10-$20 at Home Depot depending on the size and type). You could use a SurfShelf if you didn’t want to try to make one yourself (about $40 through Surfshelf.com). We already had a television in the “exercise room” (unfinished basement), so we just plugged one of our laptop docking stations into it. I simply take my laptop from the docking station in my office to the docking station in the basement to keep working. If you don’t have any of the above already, you can always go the TrekDesk route for about $500 (available from Amazon).

What can I do on the treadmill and how fast can I go? I actually keep a spreadsheet of every time that I work at the treadmill desk. An example of a good week where I used the desk 4 different days was a total of 432 minutes, 19.27 miles, and 2270 calories burned. That was walking before lunch each day, stopping for lunch, and then walking again after lunch.

As seen in the video below, I tend to walk at about a 3.0 pace and a 3.0 incline when I am checking email, blogging, and doing other things that require typing. If I am watching videos, listening to podcasts, or reading articles, I can walk at about 3.5-4.0 before my “desk” starts to wiggle too much for my liking.

I will caution that the first time that started using my treadmill desk, I ended up with plantar fasciitis and ended up having to buy a couple of products from Heel That Pain to make it better. I still use the products and the plantar fasciitis flares up on me. I can’t say with 100% certainty that it was from using the treadmill desk too much, but that was pretty much the only exercise that I was getting when it happened.

The short video below shows the mechanics of how my treadmill desk is put together, how fast I can walk on it while typing, and a brief glimpse of my infamous Pajama Jeans.

Thanks to the Affiliate Summit Feedfront Magazine, I decided to give a treadmill desk a try. I was never keen on the idea before because I like my exercise time to be my head clearing time. But I got tired of sitting in a chair all day. And I figured that I could combine my “work walks” during the day with some cardio walks and runs and night.

My husband and I set out to rig up my existing treadmill into some kind of desk. I won’t bore you with details, but we were lucky that we had some great things on hand (first…a treadmill! Then other handy items like a docking station). We bought a shelf and two shelf racks at Lowes and built the “treadmill desk.” I put a cordless mouse and keyboard on it and tested it out. After some trial and error, it seemed perfect. I started using it for a couple of days, but the kids were still home for summer break and I was getting ready to head to Affiliate Summit.

Fast forward a bit and I have now completed my first full week of working on the treadmill. Pretty decent stats. I walked just over 16 hours during the day between Monday and Friday. I burned 3730 calories (over a pound!) and walked 34.5 miles. In addition to the obvious calorie burning benefits, here were a couple that I didn’t plan on:

• I drank a lot of water. I hate drinking plain water but was so thirsty that I more than tripled my daily water intake.
• I ate less snacks. Between the time that I spent on the treadmill and the fact that I wasn’t near the kitchen, I just wasn’t thinking about food.
• I slept like a baby. Combine the mental exercise of working with the physical exercise and I was worn out each night!

I’m hoping to get back to running at least a few days a week in addition to the treadmill work. I know that I need that cardio, and I just need to keep running to stay trained to be able to run the mini marathon again next spring. I hope that this is the first of many posts about my treadmill desk!