Treadmill paces

I’m a believer you don’t really need to worry about it. Your body knows effort not pace when it comes to endurance training. I like to go off of heart rate because treadmills are often uncalibrated anyways, the two facilities I train at have treadmills that feel the same when one says i’m going 4:50 pace and one says i’m going 5:25 pace, the effort feels more like 5:00-5:10 pace and the heart rate backs that up.

If it’s an easy run keep the HR 130-150, if it’s tempo keep it 165-180, if it’s vo2max try to get it up to 5-10 lower than your max by the end of the rep.

Yeah, I use heart rate a lot too to keep things at roughly the same level both inside and outside. But that was what I was curious about. If I'm hitting ~180, would it matter if it was flat versus 1%. Because I agree with you that the heart rate should be a good litmus test, but I could be mistaken. Hence my post

Have you thought about just training hard and consistent instead of overthinking it. If treadmills messes with your mind too much just run outside.

Please explain how you know this.

Wouldn’t you have to know his max to give him HR zone info?

Teeeeeeeeechnically, yes.

But for most people, these heart rates are generally going to work. If you're maybe super young with a high max HR or older with a low max HR, you can adjust accordingly based off experience. But pretty much everyone I know that runs, ranging from teenagers to 50 year olds, just about fits into those bands described by copper.

The literature on setting the treadmill to 1% doesn't support that you need to do it. Scientific Triathlon reviewed the literature . Only 1 in 20 studies supported putting the treadmill at 1%.

scientifictriathlon.com

Bas van Hooren | EP#411

Bernardo Gonçalves

Bas van Hooren is a sport scientist, sport science consultant, and a runner with multiple national championship medals. In this interview we discuss a number of topics Bas has researched, including practical applications of t...

Link:scientifictriathlon.com/tts411/

Definitely agree that the set up for a lot of treadmills (hot/humid conditions) make it difficult to run. If you force certain paces indoors with no fans & you're overheating you're going to be working a lot harder than you should be.

That's interesting (the study above).

You're honestly going to get so many different responses on the treadmill. Some people swear it's harder for them. Machines vary and mental interest/willingness to run on them varies too.

I'm going to agree with the general posts here so far. I did almost all of my running on the treadmill over the winter, at zero percent, and estimated a race pace that was basically 1 second off on the roads.

There is also a reason why you see a range of "easy run" or general running paces in training manuals. It doesn't need to be exact. And it's pretty hard to really replicate on a day-to-day basis. The roads aren't flat and that 1 percent doesn't really replicate them. There's changing elevation all over the place, at least where I live, and even some seemingly minor hills are going to throw the pace off if you're truly going by effort. Even if you're on the track, sometimes you might be tired and you're 20 seconds off the usual easy pace.

Just run a time trial on the treadmill, adjust to that metric, and you'll feel it out as you go.

I get that. I was wanting outside input because I want the work I do on the treadmill to translate as closely as possible to overground running. Because what I think is a sample size of 1 and isn't always accurate.

It's old, but this is what I go off.

But I'd rather be dead than run ~5:21 or faster on a treadmill

I love doing intervals on a treadmill. Have no problem getting under a 6 minute pace for some interval stuff. But I find easy runs to be somewhat difficult. My easy pace is 7:50 to 8:50 pace outside but I struggle to run faster than 9 minute pace easy on treadmill. Easy pace feels much harder, but fast intervals don't? I don't understand.

That's my thinking. If the heart rate is in the right range, then it's probably good. And then adjust as needed as I gain fitness or when I feel like garbage.

I always feel like I don't get as good of a workout with zero incline. I would stick to 1% and if it's too difficult due to the heat, slow down the speed and bring a portable fan.

Do what I do.

I've been doing my tempo intervals, 5k reps, and (sometimes) hill repeats on the treadmill. It's not crazy hilly where I live, but there isn't a nice flat area that I can easily use to get into the right rhythm for intervals or reps. A loop around my complex gains/loses 88 feet over the course of ~0.45 miles. So I use the treadmill to build that efficiency and lock into a consistent pace.

But I do my easy runs, strides, hill repeats, and long runs outside. I've found that when I solely run on the treadmill, my legs aren't fully prepared for overground running because my stride must change enough somehow. However, my keeping my easy stuff with all of the elevation changes outside, I don't have this issue anymore.