Anytime of year, but especially winter, is a great time to jump on to the treadmill. Unless you are lucky enough to live somewhere with warm weather or an indoor track, many runs are happening on the treadmill. In our observational surveys of treadmill users it seems that very few people ever adjust the incline. Treadmills can be great tools for speed work because you can precisely control the pace, but they are wonderful tools for hill training too. Be sure to throw on your HR monitor and adjust the speed in response the the incline and your desired HR targets. You can make your training session mimic a run on undulating terrain (10min at 1%, 5 min at 3%, 5 at 6 %, 5 at 0%, 10 at 10%…), you can do hill repeats like none found in nature (e.x. up and down a 6% incline, -2% decline), you can do a steady uphill run forever. The options are endless.
If you are going to do a long, steady, flat run it is good to have the treadmill at 1%. There is debate about whether there is a slight decrease in energy expenditure when running on a treadmill because of the lack of wind resistance and because the treadmill belt does propel you along a bit. It has been suggested that to make your treadmill workout closer to outdoor exercise, simply raise the treadmill incline to 1% and you will expend as many calories as if you were running on flat pavement outdoors. Whether or not this is true, do it anyway. You won’t even notice and the point is to improve your fitness so…
