Why Is Treadmill Running So Difficult For Me?

Relax? It doesn't bite. If 7:30 is too hard, go slower. Who cares?

If you can't run your tempo pace on the treadmill, don't do tempos. Do a similar type of workout. Like mile repeats with short breaks (3x1600 with 1min rest).

I have no idea but the most obvious answer is that your runs outside aren’t as fast as you think they are, and the treadmill is providing some evidence of this. That obvious answer may be incorrect but it remains a possibility until disproven.

Have the same problem here.

NE runner and I'll be outside in pretty much any conditions as the treadmill is miserable for me. Easy pace outdoors is usually around 7:30 for 5-8 miles yet on a treadmill I feel like 8 flat for 3 is exhausting.

Guessing it's due to either boredom or lack of oxygen (I keep my treadmill in a windowless garage), but honestly no idea.

There not 100% the same. Treadmill calibration could be a little off, lack of air flow, mentally harder, using slightly different muscles etc

One reason is overheating. I don't know how powerful does a fan have to be to compensate for the lack of moving through the air. Built-in fans hardly even help (and not every treadmill has them). And directing a separate fan right at you doesn't reduce sweating as much. Don't you notice the sweating yourself? I'm completely drenched 30-40 minutes in even if I run easy. It's like running outside in 90+ degrees with high humidity. Luckily (usually) no direct sunlight on treadmills, or they would have been deadly.

The other thing is motor power and energy return of the treadmill surface. These two are connected. When your foot hits the treadmill, it works against the motor. If the motor is like 10 hp, it would barely notice and will keep rotating the band smoothly. Weaker 2-3 hp would struggle and work very uneven. This makes it harder for you to run. And the qualities of the surface can either return more impact energy back to your spring, or dissipate it into heat and the fight against the motor.

Normally I also have a hard time running on treadmill, but once I had access to a somewhat luxurious gym on a long business trip and they had some powerful expensive treadmills. It was winter and I could open a window next to the treadmill, outside was below freezing. I was able to run 10K time trials close to my road PR as my weekly tempos there. Something I don't really have the guts to do on the road. And it was not some deceptive speed setting, I used a footpod to verify.

I disagree it's tougher to run fast paces on a treadmill than outdoors.

Interesting. I barely sweat if I’m jogging on a treadmill. But my shirt gets completely soaked by sweat if I run tempo

There is nothing to disagree with. You must be stupid. Did you even read my post?

It could have to do with the treadmill's calibration. I've run on some treadmills that feel super easy for the pace and others that seem spot on for the effort level. The gym in my condo building has 4 treadmills, and all the runners in the building agree on the order of "easiest to hardest" treadmills.

I find the treadmill much harder. One theory I have is that it forces metronomic strides, whereas on the track I can make subtle variations in stride and pace.

You can't necessarily trust the displayed pace on a treadmill, for a number of reasons:

1) Poor calibration. Very few treadmills are perfectly accurate, and they can get worse over time. You can use a device like an NPE treadmill sensor to measure the exact speed that the belt is moving, but even that isn't perfect because...

2) Treadmill belts don't move at a constant rate. When your foot is planted, they slow down because you've just dropped a heavy load on them. When you're airborne, they speed up. Even if a belt is averaging, say, 8 miles/hour, it's going slowest when you're actually on it. The difference depends on the quality of the treadmill. Better treadmills with more powerful motors, bigger rollers, and better speed control boards will eliminate more (but never all) of this difference.

3) Treadmills may not be perfectly level. Even at a nominal 0% grade, you might be going slightly uphill (either because of the treadmill itself or the floor it's on). It may not be a ton, but it could easily be worth a few seconds/mile.

Assuming you have a calibrated, flat treadmill going exactly the same pace as outside, there are still some differences. A few things can make the treadmill feel harder:

1) Heat buildup. I run on a treadmill in my garage, and in the winter, it can be 40 degrees in there. I am typically shirtless after the first two miles, and very comfortable, even though I tend to run cold when outside. You will very quickly build up a zone of hot air around you and cook. A fan makes a huge difference.

2) Lack of familiarity (physiological differences). If you aren't used to running on a treadmill, you might be running with weird form, stressing about falling off, etc. And it's not like the differences in your form would be easily detectable by the naked eye. Only a slight increase in muscle tension can make running a lot more difficult. Until you can just comfortably cruise on a treadmill while letting your mind wander, you aren't really used to it yet. You probably are working harder on a treadmill until you've put in a few hundred miles at least.

3) Lack of familiarity (psychological). If you're just starring at the numbers and you feel like you're on some kind of torture device, it's going to feel hard. The time can crawl on a treadmill. I find that the more you do it, the easier it gets, but it's worth listening to some good music, old race videos, or whatever keeps you pumped. At least for hard workouts. For easy runs, I just zone out and watch dumb TV or listen to audiobooks.

That said, if you're used to running on the treadmill and you have a cool environment, it should be easier than running outside.

1) The lack of wind resistance is real, and most fans aren't going to replicate it. At hard workout paces, this is easily worth 5 seconds/mile.

2) Any non-research-grade treadmill is going to have a lot of bounce. This allows you to offload some of the metabolically costly cushioning that your muscles would have to do onto the deck of the machine. This is basically what super shoes do, but it's even better because you don't have to drag around the weight of the cushioning on the end of your feet.

3) Perfect pacing makes you faster. Even if you're doing mile repeats just following the shoulders of some guy who's a human metronome, he's not running as evenly paced as a treadmill. You will always be faster running evenly, and you will never run as evenly as on a treadmill.

All of this together makes a huge difference. I do a lot of treadmill training, and I can now run a half marathon about 3 minutes faster on a treadmill than I can on the roads.

I find warming up then doing a few 30 second strides on the treadmill at a much faster pace than I want to run makes it feel much easier when you bring the pace back down.

I find I overheat on treadmills and sweat a lot which can make it feel harder depending on what I'm doing. Have some fluid with you.

Its not as easy to make the same micro adjustments to pace on a treadmill as you would outside. Easier just to leave it on the same pace. Also easier to set at a pace you want to hit and leave it at that pace despite how you feel. It's the same as outside though, sometimes you have a rough day and you need to bring the pace down a bit. Maybe use heart rate as treadmills are not always calibrated accurately.

The other thing is the mental aspect of the monotony, being trapped and worrying about falling off. I've done 5k warm up, 4 x 5k at MP with a 1k float and 5 k warm down in bad weather. Felt like absolute torture. Its a skill being able to switch off and forget about how much longer you have to go. Especially when it's on a screen in front of you.

There is a common misconception that running indoors in A/C should be easier than running outside, but without a commercial fan simulating the natural breeze from outdoors, the heat you generate especially the faster you go has nowhere to go and will cook you like a convection oven.

From my experience, the more you run on these, the easier it gets. The other thing to keep in mind is not all treadmills are the same - some have a really bouncy track, others have more of a dead feeling. This can make a big difference in the pace you can run. It's like comparing a fresh pair of super shoes to some worn-out trainers.

@ OP: I have the same issue. 8-830 on the treadmill is my easy effort, but then when the weather clears up and I get outside, Im running 7-715s with the same perceived effort. I finally just gave up on worrying and count all my treadmill runs as 8min miles, no matter what pace I end up running.

@800 dude: great post. Thanks for your thoughts.

The answer: Lateral motion. As a result, staying upright is more difficult. The more you run on a treadmill the more your brain adapts to lateral motion. Also, some are less affected.

For what its worth, I have the same experience on certain treadmills but not on others so I think a lot has to do with what has been said above in terms of calibration, incline, etc. Between my home treadmill and the ones at my gym, I can almost run a full mph faster at the gym at the same heart rate. All that to say, when on the treadmill I go by time and heart rate and pretty much ignore distance/pace.

It’s because running on a treadmill is unnatural. Humans should be running outside as nature intended.

Dread the tread, head out instead.

I think the treadmill model itself makes such a difference. I used to have access to a top of the line treadmill in college and LOVED doing marathon workouts on that thing that I never would have attempted outside. But now I use a much smaller more rickety one in my condo building which makes running feel harder so I just throw ego aside and go by effort and ignore pace (which is sort of counterintuitive for the treadmill but not completely suffering makes the time pass much faster).