Hi Cheri
Totally understandable about you wanting to get some exercise for your dog. I used to have two Alaskan Malamutes and tried all manner of things. In time I found some things that worked (at least for us).
First and foremost - hello obedience training! Without that, it is just a struggle and definitely not fun. Once I got my dogs to heel (so important), sit, and stay on command, the rest fell into place.
My favorite things to do with them were hiking/backpacking (they had doggie packs which you can get from a neat place called Black Ice - they have a website). I found the dogs got plenty of a workout, plus they were quite fascinated with all the neat, novel smells on the trail which are largely invisible to us! Other than that, I did have some luck inline skating with one of them. At the time I was doing a lot of skating and was pretty decent at it. Otherwise that could have been real dangerous! Running was easier than skating and it worked well. The caveat was I always had to be very careful with the heat as dogs don't deal with it as well as we do.
Good luck with this