Transitioning from treadmill running to ground running

Either your treadmill is set to kilometers instead of miles or it's badly miscalibrated.

You didn't account for the wind resistance, the muscles involved, and energy required in propelling your body forward.

Lifting your feet on a treadmill is not a viable alternative to running. Treadmills are gimmicks designed to trick fat people into thinking they are doing something.

If you're going to road run, start training on the roads.

I appreciate that, but on a long run I'm almost 3 minutes slower?

That's a crazy amount of time to be apart.

It's in miles. I had it confirmed at the gym and the pace felt very quick too. It was A LOT quicker than what I usually run at.

Could be calibrated poorly, but it was at least 2 minutes quicker than my long run pace.

Part of this is a will power issue. You don't know how to push yourself when running outside, but the treadmill forces you to run at a constant speed. That wouldn't explain the whole discrepancy though?

I'm guessing that you might have an extremely long stride length and extremely low cadence. If your foot's contact time on the treadmill is very short, it can be more like you're quickly jumping up and down than running forward. An extreme and unrealistic example would be like you jump up, the treadmill belt length goes around 1,000 times and all of a sudden the machine would say you've run 2 miles. It's like you've learned to trick the treadmill more so than you've learned to run or propel yourself forward on ground.

willbax wrote:

I appreciate that, but on a long run I'm almost 3 minutes slower?

That's a crazy amount of time to be apart.

Listen, Will. Can I call you Will?

I used to be you. I went out and bought a treadmill for my house. I ran Fitbit challenge after Fitbit challenge, destroying everyone in my path. I never lost. I very clearly remember one day spending over 8 hours running on my treadmill to catch up to a challenge that I joined late. My confidence was at an all time high. I was unstoppable. Boston was in sight.

And then I signed up for a local 5k. I lined up at the starting line, Apple airpods in, dialed in Strava on my watch.

I smirked to myself as I thought about the serious beating I was going to put on all of these scrubs. I was wondering which of the girls in yoga pants were going to ask for my number at the end of the race.

And as the starting gun fired and I ascended the first hill, the music stopped.

How was I in so much pain? Why couldn't I catch my breath? Allergies? New shoes? No. It was much worse. I was conned into believing I could run in real life.

"What a fool am I!", I said to myself after finishing the race toward the back of the pack, after alternating between running and jogging for the second half.

I immediately sold my treadmill on Craigslist and never looked back.

It took the next two years of road running before I had a comparable time to what I was seeing on the treadmill.

There is no replacement for the pavement.

I've run in GT-1000s. Pretty decent shoe. If you like them, no need to change.

Your treadmill run is probably a sign of a good degree of fitness, but it will take some work to translate to the roads. On a road, you have to deal with wind resistance, changing slopes, uneven footing, shifts in direction, and things like that which seem small, but add up to a lot of additional fatigue at first. If I'm stuck running on an indoor track for a long time due to bad weather, the first few runs outside can feel surprisingly difficult, too.

Fortunately, it doesn't take a huge amount of work to get into the swing of things. Like most things, all it takes is gradually and sensibly increasing the amount of outside running you do. Start at low daily mileage, increase a bit each week, and in a month it will feel natural. Be patient and give your body time to adapt in the ways it needs to.

Once outside running feels natural, then start thinking about increasing mileage and adding workouts and racing and all that other stuff.

Fart Garfunkel wrote:

I'm guessing that you might have an extremely long stride length and extremely low cadence. If your foot's contact time on the treadmill is very short, it can be more like you're quickly jumping up and down than running forward. An extreme and unrealistic example would be like you jump up, the treadmill belt length goes around 1,000 times and all of a sudden the machine would say you've run 2 miles. It's like you've learned to trick the treadmill more so than you've learned to run or propel yourself forward on ground.

Are you an art major or something? In order to stay on the treadmill you have to propel yourself forward to counteract the treadmill moving backward. It's not different from running outside minus a small amount of air resistance.

Haha that's fair enough. Makes sense and thanks for putting it so bluntly..

You are correct - you have to push forward to keep yourself in the same place on a treadmill. If you simply jump up, you will fly off the back when you land. It is running, not jumping.

But there is something different. I had a similar situation to the OP, though not as extreme. I would run all my workouts on the treadmill, and made it my goal to do each comparable workout a bit faster each week - increasing the speed of the treadmill by one increment every tempo run or every interval workout. In a typically training block, I was able to make that increase every week, and eventually was running 6:00/mi for 8-9 mi tempos. I used different treadmills at a nice gym, and they all lined up with the distance/pace reported by my foot pod (which itself was calibrated outdoors on a track).

So I was running well and improving week over week ... on the treadmill. But my outdoor runs were the same. Not bad, but not improving and not nearly as fast as three treadmill. My best 15k at that time was around 6:55 pace - almost a minute shy of a similar distance on a treadmill tempo.

So there is something different. And I think it’s more than wind resistance, as I always ran with a 1 % incline, and even had outdoor runs with tailwinds that never approached my treadmill performances.

Now I train exclusively outdoors and have had better results.

My treadmill is calibrated terribly. I have a Garmin footpod and wear it outside and also indoors on the treadmill. The treadmill will definitely help with fitness but you don't utilize your muscles the same so if you can still incorporate outdoor running that would be ideal.