Do you count treadmill miles?

MPH = Road miles + (.7 / (a+b/a-b) Tmill_miles) /0.9

a = incline

b= MPH reading

enjoy

I hate treadmills, but if I had to run on one I would count the miles. It's not identical to regular running but close enough. It's not like counting bicycle or elliptical or some such in your MPW.

I've been running a lot on the treadmill recently. I think they help me because I'm forced to pay attention to my form when I have to make sure not to drift off to the side and not to let my feet make a loud thud that reverberates throughout the gym. But I wouldn't put too much stake into them for accuracy of pace. A 6:00 pace on the treadmill feels a lot easier than a 6:00 pace outside. And you're also missing out on technical aspects like rounding sharp corners, going up and down steep hills, cutting through the wind, etc.

Interesting. when I run on the treadmill i feel so tired like i'm working way to hard. 6:30 feels like 7.

Same here, I feel like I'm working much harder on the treadmill for a given pace. I kind of assumed it was the extra heat from not having air moving across you (my gym doesn't have fans near/on the treadmills), but the running itself feels different too.

Don't like staring at walls wrote:

I hate treadmills, but if I had to run on one I would count the miles. It's not identical to regular running but close enough. It's not like counting bicycle or elliptical or some such in your MPW.

How is it not identical to regular running?

jeje wrote:

Don't like staring at walls wrote:

I hate treadmills, but if I had to run on one I would count the miles. It's not identical to regular running but close enough. It's not like counting bicycle or elliptical or some such in your MPW.

How is it not identical to regular running?

the action of the belt pulling you along. The ground does not pull you along outside.

People usually advise setting the incline of the treadmill at 1% to equalize treadmill and road miles. This is the study that advice is based on:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8887211

I think it is mentally much harder to run on a treadmill, however, so maybe there is some mental training aspect of treadmills that makes up for the lower energy cost. You get more of this kind of mental training from a treadmill than outdoor running:

http://www.runnersworld.com/race-training/how-to-build-mental-muscle

EPOpian wrote:

the action of the belt pulling you along. The ground does not pull you along outside.

That makes no difference to your body. The belt is not pulling you along. Neither does the ground outside.

I hate treadmills, but run on them three times a week. Close to half of my mileage are probably on them. And yes, I count 1 mile on them with 1% incline as 1 mile. (I also occasionally do hill work on them with 5-6% incline, when running outside is not practical due to weather.)

There is a 49 year old in our running community who does nothing but run. Well, he works, but he had no other interests, no children and is a total jerk.

At a race last summer, he didn't too well and was passed the last 200 meters by a female Kenyan. At the awards banquet, he was pounding the table in frustration, saying how he was going to "train his brains out and pound her in the ground next year."

If he only saw the people laughing at him. What a joke.

You think if someone does a 30 min treadmill run 4 times a week on top of anything else, maybe they shouldn't count any of those miles?

Don't like staring at walls wrote:

People usually advise setting the incline of the treadmill at 1% to equalize treadmill and road miles. This is the study that advice is based on:

1% is a good rule of thumb. This chart comes in handy:

Nutella1 wrote:

1% is a good rule of thumb. This chart comes in handy:

http://www.hillrunner.com/training/tmillchart.php

That is the most WORTHLESS IGNORANT PIECE OF CRAP chart ever devised. Anybody that has EVER run a lot of miles at incline on a treadmill would easily know that.

Here is a MUCH BETTER calculator and one I have found to be very accurate in effort level.

I never count treadmill miles. All the other runners wonder how I can run the times I do when I tell them I average 4 miles a week from Nov. to March.

Have any of you did 75 minutes at 4% incline? If you have, you would know that the effort to do those 9 miles is similar to an almost 11 mile run on flat roads.

Mileage means VERY LITTLE.

The treadmill doesn't take into account the force you put on the belt. I could be running the same cadence but I would be going faster outside.

The treadmill is much harder, imo. 7:15 pace on the treadmill feels like 6 min pace outside.

Crap forum wrote:

The treadmill doesn't take into account the force you put on the belt. I could be running the same cadence but I would be going faster outside.

Wrong. Every force your legs put on a treadmill is exactly the same as they'd put on the ground, at the same speed. The only difference is the air resistance outside, as mentioned.

Crap forum wrote:

The treadmill is much harder, imo. 7:15 pace on the treadmill feels like 6 min pace outside.

No. The treadmill is easier, you just aren't used to it, or maybe yours is mis-calibrated. Many people could probably break their 5k PR on a treadmill.

The advantage of the belt is offset by the mental torture of being on a treadmill.

theohiostate wrote:

The advantage of the belt is offset by the mental torture of being on a treadmill.

That's how it feels to me anyway.

On the chart and calculator posted above, I notice they don't give any source or explain how they come up with those results. Anyone have any idea if they are based on something or are they just stuff that someone made up?