Treadmill vs. Roads

A 100-yard track? Well it's better than nothing I guess. You'd be better served running by time as trying to count the laps would be most annoying.

Come to think of it, the sickest indoor winter event I can recall was a mulit-day ultra held in some school in Ontario in the dead of winter: Running laps in the school hallways. No kidding.

I used to run 2-2.5 miles every night after wrestling practice, through a 40-50 meter high school hallway and up a set of stairs, down another hallway and back down another set of stairs, repeat for 15-20 minutes.

Was a wrestler and not a runner, but those runs were a blast.

And not one of these wimpy new age high schools with carpeted hallways,

It was cement and linoleum. And WE LIKED IT.

It has nothing to do with TMs, but it sounds like mplatt and I had a similar experience in HS (although I was not a wrestler). Like most schools, we did not have access to a track for indoor season. Although we mostly logged miles out on the streets, we would sometimes run inside the school. I really enjoyed these workouts. We would run single file in a loop that went down the main hallway (commercial tile), up the stairwell, along the main upstairs hallway, around a little corner, down the stairs, around a couple more corners back to the main hallway. On the second floor the guy at the back end would sprint and grab the lead before the turn onto the stairs. We would do this continually. Sometimes we would run barefoot. I distinctly remember taking as few as two or three "steps" (leaps, actually) to go down the stairs.

I would love to get my old teammates together and do this again (but it will never happen as the school has since been extensively renovated). In fact, I miss having teammates to do those sorts of workouts, period. Heck, I'd love to get some folks together to do the single file lap thing at the local college 200 indoor track. Scheduling is such a b*tch these days though.

I'm going to buy a TM for my wife who walks 400-500 miles a year. I figure I might use it 5-8 times a year. Should I buy one which is more in tune with walking (not a lot of bells and whistles) or should I buy one more designed for running/training? It makes a difference of $500-$1000.

Yikes and Then some wrote:

Come to think of it, the sickest indoor winter event I can recall was a mulit-day ultra held in some school in Ontario in the dead of winter: Running laps in the school hallways. No kidding.

Haha. Too funny. Bust out the measuring wheel!

Apparently you have never been on a Woodway.

The "walking" treadmills don't seem to be made to last. Small motors, small rollers, etc. If you've got the money, buy a halfway decent model. You can get some solid TMs w/o all the extras (like HRMs). Check out Pacemaster. That was the first TM I owned. A nice unit at a good price. Stay away from Weslo/Weider/etc. brands (all the same parent company anyway).

What I present are various grade and speed combinations that result in equal or nearly equal amounts of oxygen being consumed. This does not mean the benefits are the same in every way. Certainly running up a steep grade at a slow pace is not challenging the mechanics of running faster on a flat or lesser grade. I'm still learning and so far have only 45 years experience comparing the aerobic demands of treadmill and over-ground running. In that relatively short period of time I so far have always been able to find grades and speeds that produced similar aerobic demands of the runner. And maybe speed isn't so important in some cases. I had a runner spend 3 days a week for 12 weeks, run 10X1minute at 20% and 6-7 MPH. The spring's first race was a 9:17 3k and 2 weeks later she ran 9:00. Not bad for no speed and only lots of gutting it out on a steep grade and slow speed. TM offers a good place to work however hard you want. In fact it may be better than outside if you need to prepare for a warm-weather event and you are stuck in a cold climate; or to get out of the heat in the south. In addition to testing aerobic responsses to various grades and speeds of running, I have had runners subjectively rate various speed/grade combinations, and there are differences as to how one runner views a particular combination -- some prefer steeper grade with less speed and others prefer more speed and less grade, even though the aerobic demand may be equal.

Absolutely.

I also never got the point of putting up the incline by 1-2% just to recreate the effort per pace of running outside. Using a HR monitor and running for a fixed time and HR seem much more sensible - unless the objective is to work on the mechanics of climbing slight inclines.

Instead of constantly relating the treadmill to running outside I think it is much better to view it as a separate world. Compare your TM runs from week to week. Use it to do speedwork through the winter and compare session to session, month to month and year to year. The monotony and similarity are great for comparison purposes. There are no hills, no wind and usually controlled temperature - what could be better in terms of standardization.

I agree with the comments about having to get used to the treadmill after running outside.

OF COURSE the tredmill burns LESS calories. You have to push off on the roads so you do more work. More work equals more calories used. The tredmill rotates so you only have to go through the motion of running.

If you want to use the tredmill though, crank that baby up to 15 MPH and RUN on it! See how long you can keep going at 15 miles an hour. Then you will burn them calories, baby!!

GerrytheJogger wrote:

OF COURSE the tredmill burns LESS calories. You have to push off on the roads so you do more work. More work equals more calories used. The tredmill rotates so you only have to go through the motion of running.

If you want to use the tredmill though, crank that baby up to 15 MPH and RUN on it! See how long you can keep going at 15 miles an hour. Then you will burn them calories, baby!!

I will not take tredmill advice from a guy who can not even spell "treadmill" and who has flunked high skool fisics.

here is a link to last year's discussion of essentially this same question.

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?board=1&id=751551&thread=732648

Jack,

Well, I guess you have me by about 20 years and a bunch of degrees, but in my view of it having been the subject of testing myself in a handful of these V02 studies and been around high end runners using treadmills and owning 4 of them over my lifetime and helping kids with workouts, I have yet to see a quality runner be able to run anywhere near their typical recovery pace without a much greater effort.

I'll admit to not having O2 measuring equipment, but most times we strap on a HR monitor to help guage something (don't worry we account for heat) and always the same results: much harder for fast kids to run typical recovery pace on a treadmill.

I became so obsessed with this that I even went as far as doing the calibration whilst the runners were on the machine.

I did notice that the differential became much less when they increased speeds.

But, my point still remains the same: most treadmills and runners are not calibrated enough for that chart to be useful to them, particularly to the population that purchased your book and utilize the chart. " A little knowledge is a dangerous thing."

And if I got a few beer down you I am sure you would agree, "Ignore the chart, figure out what works best for you as a racer."

I hope you don't have to become obsesssed to properly calibrate while running on the TM. I hope you did wear your rectal proble to show how heat was affecting the HR monitors. I guess we have to get together and check that recovery-effort thing out. That intrigues me. I have had several runners go over 2 hours at relatively easy paces and VO2 stays the same as during short runs at the same speed. Not really sure what the concern is, but hopefully we can get together some time and I can get a better understanding of the problem that seems to arise during easy runs. As referred to above, while using temperature probes, the effort does become considerably less enjoyable when core temp gets above 38 degrees C (about 100 or 101 F). In fact you can go for a steady run and just about say when your temp reaches 39, from how you feel, but that is not necessarily affecting the aerobic demand of that work. Quite honestly I think we may be talking about two different things. And of course I do qualify for geezer status (according to my 13yr old daughter), so that may bring with it a built-in excuse.

jtupper wrote:

As referred to above, while using temperature probes, the effort does become considerably less enjoyable...

You probably could have stopped that sentence right there.

Mike, I do not doubt what you say in the least, and I find your observation intriguing (as I know your abilities as a runner). Do you think it has anything to do with "kids" per se? I can honestly say that my road/TM easy pace correlation is very good, whether I measure it subjectively or via an HRM. My easy pace correlation is at least as good as my tempo pace correlation. Any error I see is no greater than what I expect from ordinary day-to-day variation.

Do you think this might have anything to do with my earlier conjecture about the lack of motion cues and a subconscious "tensing up" of the runner due to fear of tripping, falling off , etc.? I can't believe that I'm just the rare egg who finds a good correlation between TM and road, but I'm sure your observations are accurate.

That's not obsessed, that's just good methodology! I always calibrate my TMs by running on them, once at base pace and again a bit faster, like AT pace, and then repeat the tests. I guess that's just the engineer in me ;-)

JimFiore wrote:

I can honestly say that my road/TM easy pace correlation is very good, whether I measure it subjectively or via an HRM. My easy pace correlation is at least as good as my tempo pace correlation. Any error I see is no greater than what I expect from ordinary day-to-day variation.

Jim, if you really wanted to do that right you could run on the treadmill without knowing the speed, and then based on your effort guess the speed. You'd have to get someone's help to set the speed, but at least then it would be a single-blind test. Of course you'd want to do several different speeds and not be told how you are doing until the whole test is finished.

Running on a treadmill is better than no running at all.

Beyond endless arguments about relative velocity etc. two issues remain about road running vs. treadmills: air resistance and heat buildup.

Although we don't detect any differences in the ground reaction forces in treadmill vs. overground running, a small horizontal impeding force can be more expensive than one would guess. We have done some research on that topic (Chang & Kram, J. Applied Physiology). Inclining the treadmill slightly obviously increases the oxygen cost of treadmill to compensate for air resistance. Another way to do it would be to stretch a light piece of rubber surgical tubing from the back (at the waist level) to a wall. That way, you wouldn't have to run uphill all the time. But a person would tend to slack off and drift backwards on the treadmill (not very safe).

In terms of temperature, there are more comfortable ways to study heart rate drift and body temperature during runing. Rectal probes are the gold standard but in zoology it is common to use "mini-mitters" to measure body temp. These devices are cheap, battery powered and telemeter the signal to a handheld device. They are small enough to swallow (about the size of a multivitamin pill). I have not heard of any athletes using them, but I would have said that about herat rate monitors in 1984.

If I was training athletes in a hot climate, I would investigate using them.

By the way, the minimitters don't stay in the digestive tract forever, they are defecated out.