Five Treadmill Workouts That Mimic Trail Running & Training
For any level of fitness
by Roy Kok
[Alternate title: Do a Treadmill Workout: Enjoy Nachos and Wine!]
Treadmill running sucks for so many runners. Yet, some people actually like it. Myself included. I admit my shame.
B-but this is a publication for trail running! You exclaim, throwing your hand-held water bottle at the wall and slapping your compression tights in frustration.
It’s friggin’ cold out there, though, eh, and everyone, including the hardiest of mountain women and men who kick all kinds of ass all winter, need and deserve a break. Not even the best gear makes running in the cold acceptable.
But the treadmill is nicknamed the “dreadmill,” you say wryly, shaking your head at the spectre of a trail runner, scarred and sunburnt and ropy with nature-made muscles, actually loping on a machine made to simulate running. Pathetic.
Let’s get serious. Not everyone lives near trails or even hills, let alone mountains, and yet there are a great deal of people who train to destination race amazing races that need to train through the winter and are stuck in the Prairies or live deep in the heart of suburban sprawl.
A treadmill workout is a great placeholder workout that takes the stress and pressure out of the gruelling regimen of running outside all year long.
As an aside, most coaches suggest setting the incline to 1% to mimic the effect of wind shear. I don’t really care about this. It is very freeing to hit 0% incline and your fastest comfortable speed after a hill session (see below). Just make sure you don’t do a bunch of consecutive workouts at 0% incline or you might face difficulties like shin splints when you hit the trails and tarmac again.
Basically, the key to treadmill workouts is to switch them up. Change the workout every time so it’s a new challenge and it involves constantly changing inclines and tempos so you’re not clock watching and demotivated.
Make sure you have a defined workout and a goal, as well as a reward for every one of these gruelling undertakings.
Their absolute value is that you can define the terms yourself second by second. Even if you follow a workout like I’ve defined below, you can change and adapt them to your terms. Every treadmill workout outlined is designed to benefit trail running and maximize enjoyment and distraction.
There is no long run. In my experience, only dedicated athletes have the motivation to run for 90+ minutes at a long run pace on a treadmill. They have the motivation: sponsorship, a big purse, fame or glory, you name it. This is not the focus of most trail runners and not the purpose of this guide. If you can run for 90 minutes on the treadmill for no reason, you’re ten seconds into this article shaking your head like, what the heck? Why am I reading this?
Further distractions like your favourite playlist, a close-captioned TV, or judging the people entering the Winners next door are a must.
Here we go! The five best alternating treadmill workouts:
- Power hikes. Look up some of the longest ascents you have ever run in a trail race or ultra. Set the treadmill to similar or maximum incline (usually 15%, if higher, lucky you) and find your fastest power hiking pace. Repeat the distance of those ascents, as many as you can, with hydration breaks in between, for 1–2 hours. Congratulations, you’ve just bagged (x) amount of peaks. A nice, long hike averages 3–6 kilometers on average. Just remember that there are no aid stations at the top. No bacon and peanut butter sandwiches and flat cola. Bring those in a ziploc and you’ll make people stare: “I’m an ultrarunner,” you’ll mumble, as bacon bits spew from your lips and you chug from a 2-liter bottle of coca cola. The advantages to this workout should be pretty obvious, unless you trail race in Manitoba and nowhere else.
- The track workout. Do a track workout on the treadmill. Most treadmills are set to mileage, not kilometers, even in Canada, for Pete’s sake. 400 meters is almost exactly .25 miles. (1 mile = 1600 meters as well, which is four laps as you probably already know if you’re a beer mile fanatic). So, you can do your favourite ladder workout simply by watching the mileage counter and adjusting your temp accordingly. You can even do an actual beer mile. Please do not cite this article if you vomit in your gym. This workout builds strength and cardio whether you are a 10k fanatic or a dedicated ultrarunner.
- The fartlek. This one is for when you’ve had it with hills and speed and if you have kids, you want to mention your workout a lot at the dinner table that day for maximum entertainment value. Adjust the incline from a minimum and maximum (say, 1%-8%) and note your maximum sustainable speed at the highest comfortable incline for two minutes. Every two minutes, change the incline and speed to whatever you want but make sure you hit your maximum sustainable speed/incline 3–5 times over a minimum of 45 minutes. From that point, you can increase the maximum sustainable as well as the length of the workout the next time. Fartleks are cool because they mimic the variability of trail running intensity without the roots, ice, dogs and mud.
4. The “I’m not a treadmill but I function like one, cardiovascularly.” Surprise! One recommended workout isn’t on a treadmill at all. It is on a different gym machine that provides a low impact cardio workout that is easy on the bones, tendons and joints but still gives your heart and lungs a thrashing. I get why people hate the elliptical, so instead I recommend the arc elliptical (it’s awesome, trust me) or spin class or the spin bike if you don’t like throngs of sweating sufferers getting yelled at to the tune of generic techno music. The arc elliptical has built in workouts you can choose from. Spin class is easy, just follow the barked commands and try not to sweat on anyone. On a spin bike by yourself, you need to do a HIIT workout. The simplest HIIT workout is whatever amount of time you can sustain maximum intensity followed by enough recovery to be breathing relatively normally, and repeat until you feel like you’re going to die. It sucks. But 30 minutes of that is more than enough to replace a longer run so you can go home early and have grilled cheese for dinner. Anyone who disagrees will suffer gravely (by not getting to share your awesome grilled cheese).
5. My favourite workout is speed + hills, but it is by far the toughest. I run a fast two miles at increasingly fast pace beginning with a tiny 2% incline (ending in a 5:30 half mile at 0% incline). Then I hit the highest possible incline and run as fast as I can for two minutes. I lower the incline 3% and increase the speed. I do this until I am running 8 miles an hour at whatever the incline I’m at that I can tolerate (and I have done this for at least 12 minutes), then one minute active recover and hydration, and then a progressively fast mile. I do the same hill workout again and one more fast mile. Then one slower recovery mile at 2% grade. This is a sick workout and it can easily be scaled for relative fitness. It kills an hour quite nicely, and has probably killed a trainer or coach or two who have prescribed it. It’s tough. You won’t be doing any follow up working out unless it is simple core, stretching or foam rolling after this one.
That’s it! You’ve conquered the treadmill. The goals for conquering this niche of training, as you have likely deduced, are actually having goals (a pre-defined workout), variation, and lots of intensity. Other than grilled cheese, I haven’t mentioned rewards, but do reward yourself, even if it is skipping burpees or foam rolling that day, or maybe you need a Whopper to entice you.
Any way you slice it, if you put in the work, set a goal and give yourself a carrot and you’re far more likely to repeat that performance.
If that carrot is nachos and wine, even better.
