Elliptical to running time

You count your elliptical as ELLIPTICAL time. Its NOT RUNNING. You can't just beat yourself up and then count cross training as mileage. Part of running is learning how much you can recover from and sometimes that means holding back a bit. Elliptical can be pretty good training, but it is not running.

180-300 min elliptical = 0 min running

This is my scientifically proven formula to equate elliptical to running miles:

((Current 5k pace*duration*incline)/resistance * #of soccer moms in tights in your peripheral vision)*0= running miles

If you cross train, you should have a heart rate monitor to compare.

JamesTheAmateur wrote:

The first is how do you count elliptical time to running time? 1:1 or 3:2 or what?

elliptical : running

1000 : 1

None. The closest elliptical comes to anything wound be like pedaling your bicycle standing, and still on a bicycle is more difficult. The only elliptical I would use is the Nordic track Fs5i, Fs7i or Fs9i and count only the time and heart rate since on the aforementioned machines your mileage time is actually slower than actual running. On a regular elliptical, stick to the heart rate. I wish you a prompt recovery!

You have to basically do cross training on feel and time, as some have suggested with the heart rate monitor. I would tend to favor a bike over elliptical, as the bike is non-load-bearing and probably does a better job on the quads. You should also adjust the resistance to a relatively moderate level so that you're able to get some fast leg turnover like in running while also working at the perceived effort that you are trying to match.

Thanks everyone for the advice. And no, I wasn't saying I was going to replace running time with elliptical time, more for how you count equivalency across the two. So thanks for the useless answers.

But thanks to the ones that suggested I go by heart rate. I'll do that and just go for roughly as long as I would run, even if that is extremely mind numbing

Use heart rate and perceived effort and god forbid some common sense.

your race workout mileage is very important.............and your weekly junk mileage is just recovery and filler.

A 7 minute mile jogging and 7 minutes on the elliptical at a similar effort are essentially the same and neither help you run a 5k fast. But you will lose weight and build endurance and keep you moving.

I've read Meb uses elliptical, also some guy who's way faster than all of us made the Olympic marathon team in the 80s off of using nordic track skier. These guys both ran the first 10k of their marathon faster than most of our PR's. So obviously it can work, does work, and is working.