The Definitive Guide to Treadmill & Tapis Roulant Training

Posted on March 31st, 2020

Words & Photos: Filippo Canetta

"I've been training on the treadmill for over ten years, and everyone made fun of me for it. Now they'd sell their car to have one!"

That's what I wrote on Facebook a few days ago, during the COVID-19 pandemic, when we were all stuck at home and, following a ridiculous crusade against people training outdoors (without bothering anyone), we couldn't even go out for a short run, so it feels like the right time to tell you how I train for marathons, ultramarathons and ultratrails on the treadmill, while living in Milan.

You can read here about how it all started and how running changed my life.

Every year I cover over 1,000 kilometers and 20,000 meters of elevation gain on the treadmill, and I've put together a set of exercises I find increasingly useful for my training.

THE BENEFITS OF THE TREADMILL

The main advantages of this useful tool are:

1. It helps you find your "right" pace

2. It saves time

3. It lets you simulate many situations that aren't easy to reproduce outdoors

4. It trains your mental toughness

5. It lets you train regardless of weather or environmental conditions (safety)

USEFUL TIPS FOR USE

Let's go through some general points before diving into the specific exercises.

The belt you run on moves beneath your feet independently of you, so to avoid getting dragged, it's important to set a minimum incline.

TIP: 1% for road running, 2% for trail running.

It's always best to do a short 10-minute warm-up. At first, it can feel harder to build up speed compared to running outdoors, so I recommend a brief progressive warm-up, for example going from 8 km/h to 12 km/h, increasing by 0.5 km/h every minute. Likewise, follow your workouts with 5 minutes of cool-down, gradually reducing incline and speed down to walking pace. Most treadmills have this feature built in, but the duration they offer is always too short. Watching the numbers and your effort level drop will help you appreciate the results of your training.

TIP: if you want precise data on the display, it's best to run the warm-up and cool-down as separate sessions from the main workout.

Even if the room you're in starts at 20°C, after an hour of training the temperature around you will climb to somewhere between 26° and 30°C. This will actually come in handy for some specific workouts. In general, if you're doing sessions longer than 40 to 60 minutes, it's essential to keep a water bottle within reach. Sweat loss can reach more than a liter per hour.

TIP: since there's no airflow generated by your own movement pushing air ahead of you, open a window if you can, or use a fan, to avoid excessive sweating.

Running on the treadmill also helps you analyze and become more aware of your posture while running.

TIP: you can record a short slow-motion video of yourself, from the side and from behind, to watch your running form the way you've never seen it before.

Try to make use of the whole belt, and avoid running only near the front with your feet landing on the deck frame, this will help you run with your torso slightly tilted forward and get you Mo Farah's stride.

The belt and the treadmill's structure absorb more of your impact with the surface, which puts less strain on your joints.

On the screen, if your treadmill has one, or on a tablet, you can play your favorite videos. During long sessions at a steady pace, this really helps pass the time, and it can be a great learning opportunity too, there are online courses on just about anything.

TIP: I recommend videos around 10 minutes long each, not too lengthy. Add them to your "Watch Later" list on YouTube, then use the "play all" function, starting from the first video in the list.

HOW TO TRAIN FOR ROAD RUNNING

The single biggest lesson I've learned from using the treadmill to prepare for my half marathons (PB 1h 16') and marathons (PB 2h 44') has been being able to pinpoint, with extreme precision, the right pace to hold for the entire race.

The treadmill lets you be very precise with your workouts, it's completely immune to GPS fluctuations, road obstacles or unexpected surprises, and it keeps all your data constantly in view, without having to glance down at your watch.

At the start, using a heart rate monitor helped me a lot. Most treadmills can also display it on screen. As I kept training and analyzing my data, I learned to know myself better and better, eventually being able to do without it. Relying on perceived effort, I also managed to train the mental toughness needed to resist the temptation to slow down.

As is well known, the shorter the race distance, the higher the pace. Without getting into complex reasoning about metabolic fat and sugar consumption, try to picture your body as a machine with a fuel tank, or better yet, like an e-bike with a battery. Schematically, we can represent our consumption through our heart rate or our perceived effort. The faster we go, the higher our heart rate and effort will be, and the greater our energy consumption.

Now, all that's left is figuring out the maximum effort we can sustain for the time needed to cover the target distance.

Let's look at how the treadmill can help with half marathon and marathon preparation, though the same reasoning can be applied to any distance. There are certainly far more detailed scientific texts on how to determine race pace, but here I want to describe a simple, easy-to-apply empirical method, starting from a solid aerobic base already built up beforehand.

I'm not a fan of training plans, we've already got enough obligations to follow without adding new ones. Instead, I like to experiment, figure out whether what I've done is a workout that actually serves me, and then try to improve. You can slot these workouts into your own plan, or do what I do: run them whenever I feel like it.

TRAINING FOR THE HALF MARATHON

In the half, you have to give everything, no excuses, no holding back, you need to reach the finish with your battery at 10%, but the engine still smoking.

The quality to train for the half marathon is definitely speed, and in my opinion the best tool for this is short and medium repeats with quick, moving recoveries.

The precision with which you can adjust treadmill pace is extremely high, in fact, on the road it's basically impossible to nudge your speed up or down by 0.1 km/h. This lets you experiment both with the length of your repeats and with recovery time and pace, while keeping the goal fixed: finishing the workout with the battery nearly drained.

Once the speed is set, force yourself to think it can't be changed, unlike running on the road, where repeats often end up getting slower and slower and the distances are never quite equal to one another.

You can start with a few classics:

• 10 x 500 m at roughly 95% of the maximum effort you can sustain, with a 1-minute recovery at 80%
• 5 x 1000 m at roughly 90% of the maximum effort you can sustain, with a 1.5-minute recovery at 75%

Write down your speeds and times on a sheet, and next time try to increase the speed by 0.1 km/h, until you reach the maximum speed for that type of exercise.

Another great exercise that takes advantage of the treadmill's accuracy is the 123456 pyramid:

• 6 km at a slow pace, roughly 70% of maximum effort
• 5 km, 1 km/h faster than the previous
• 4 km, 1 km/h faster than the previous
• 3 km, 1 km/h faster than the previous
• 2 km, 1 km/h faster than the previous
• 1 km, 1 km/h faster than the previous

But since I like to play it safe, an exercise I really love for any distance is trying to run it at race pace. To build up to it, this is usually how I go about it:

• 10 km at race pace
• 15 km at race pace, 4-5 days later (honestly, less than that, but give it a try this way)
• 20 km at race pace, 4-5 days later (honestly, less than that, but give it a try this way)

What matters most is being able to pinpoint your cruising speed based on your level of effort.

TRAINING FOR THE MARATHON

Nailing your cruising speed matters even more in the marathon, the king of distances, where the goal is to arrive with your battery completely drained. Going too fast means running out of energy before the finish, going too slow means falling short of your target.

Here too, the treadmill comes to the rescue with its precision and consistency.

The repeats get longer:

• 10 x 1000 m at roughly 85% of the maximum effort you can sustain, with a 1-minute recovery at 70%
• 5 x 2000 m at roughly 80% of the maximum effort you can sustain, with a 1.5-minute recovery at 65%
• 4 x 3000 m at roughly 75% of the maximum effort you can sustain, with a 2-minute recovery at 60%

These exercises help your body and mind understand that you're capable of going faster than marathon pace, and that this pace is, all things considered (you're lying to yourself here), actually a relaxed one.

The pyramid becomes 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 km in progression, starting from 60% effort. The gradual increase in speed does a great job simulating the depletion of energy reserves you experience in the final kilometers of a marathon.

But if you'd rather play it safe too:

• 25 km at race pace
• 20 km at race pace, 5-7 days later (honestly, less than that, but give it a try this way)
• 35 km at race pace, 5-7 days later (honestly, less than that, but give it a try this way)
• 40 km at race pace, 5-7 days later (honestly, less than that, but give it a try this way)

As distance and time requirements grow, the mental side of things becomes increasingly important. Being able to switch on autopilot and focus on something else really matters here. This is where the treadmill proves very useful, all you need to do is set your cruising speed and lose yourself in an Eliud Kipchoge video or two (queue up at least two in a row, though). Once you've internalized the idea that you can handle that speed, on race day, with the adrenaline pumping, you'll almost certainly perform even better.

SUMMARY TABLE OF EXERCISES (email us at info@wildtee.it to get the Excel file where you can log and run your own simulations)

HOW TO TRAIN FOR TRAIL RUNNING AND ULTRA TRAIL

Trail running is my passion, I love pushing myself for hours just to reach silent, untouched places.

On the Wild Tee BLOG you'll find stories from the best Trail Running race experiences, and HERE, a few stats.

"But how do you manage to run trails and ultras in the mountains or the desert while living in Milan?" is the question everyone always asks me.

Now I'll explain how.

I've prepared for UTMB, Western States, Spartathlon, Marathon des Sables and many Ultra Trails using the treadmill.

The longer the race, the more important the consistency of your pace becomes. The secret is knowing how to adapt to the terrain while keeping your effort as steady as possible.

Here too, the treadmill can be a huge help in simulating changes in terrain incline. In this case, we'll try to vary incline and speed at the same time.

There are two workouts that have helped me tackle long Alpine climbs, despite living right in the middle of the Po Valley.

PROGRESSIVE CLIMB

Starting from a minimum incline of 2% and a good speed (corresponding to roughly 90% of maximum effort)

Increase the incline by +0.5% every 500 m and decrease speed by -0.2 km/h.

Increase the incline by +0.5% every 500 m and decrease speed by -0.2 km/h, until reaching the maximum incline your treadmill allows.

At first, it won't be easy to set the right starting speed. I base mine on the speed I can sustain at 10% incline, and from there I work out my starting speed by subtracting 16 increments of 0.2 km/h, which comes to 3.2 km/h.

Once you're able to complete the whole climb, you can increase your starting speed by 0.1-0.2 km/h. Or decrease speed by -0.1 km/h instead of -0.2 km/h at each incline change, or extend the distance between changes to 1000 m.

It's a good exercise once, over 10 km, you're hitting an average incline of 7-8%, corresponding to 700-800 m of elevation gain (D+).

ROLLING HILLS (no descent)

Starting from a minimum incline of 2% and a good speed (corresponding to roughly 85% of maximum effort), increase the incline by +0.5% every 250 m and decrease speed by -0.1 km/h until reaching 10% or 12% incline, then decrease the incline by -0.5% and increase speed by 0.1 km/h until you're back down to 2% incline, and repeat as many times as you like.

The basic principle is to decrease speed as the incline increases, and increase it as the incline decreases.

A possible variation is to climb all the way to the maximum incline, descend back down to the midpoint, and repeat the cycle staying in the upper range of inclines, or to change the interval based on a set time rather than a fixed distance.

As a rule of thumb, up to 12% you should run, above 12% it's better to walk.

Training fast walking at 6-7 km/h is extremely important, in fact, when the incline is steep, walking is far less energy-costly. But you need to be used to doing it fast.

These exercises are very useful for learning to keep your effort level steady as the incline changes, which in my opinion is one of the key traits of a good ultra trail runner.

We all know the type, the ones who take off like a rocket and then, on the second climb, say "I was going well, then I just hit a wall", no, my friend, you just started too fast and couldn't hold it! Anyone can go hard on the first climb, it's on the last one that you see who managed to hold the highest steady pace.

It's a good exercise once, over 15-20 km, you're hitting an average incline of 6-7%, corresponding to 900-1400 m of elevation gain (D+). Once you can complete a session with 2,000 m of D+ on the treadmill, you'll be ready for any climb out in nature. Here too, the mental side plays a major role. On uphill trail sections you need patience, since you move more slowly and the kilometers seem to never end, but even the worst climb out in nature will never be as grueling as one on the treadmill, because a thousand little details and the scenery around you help keep your mind occupied.

Most treadmills can reach a top speed of 16-18 km/h and a maximum incline of 12-15%, which is more than enough to simulate most of your races.

While doing a bit of research for this article, I found a model that goes from a -3% negative incline all the way up to +25%, but I won't even tell you what it costs!

The descent is the one thing we can't train on the treadmill. I tried putting books under the back of the treadmill, but the results were far from satisfying, and the risk of getting hurt isn't worth the exercise. Let's spare our knees, ligaments and quads, this way we can actually train more often.

All of these exercises can also be done wearing a backpack, of varying weight, and they're extremely useful for testing your gear.

While preparing for the Marathon des Sables (250 km, self-sufficient, staged, across the Sahara Desert), I gradually worked my way up to running with a 9-kilogram backpack, and realized that what I'd been using on the climbs would have wrecked my back. (See the article on the MdS)

On top of that, the heat that builds up after 40 minutes is extremely useful for preparing to race in hot climates.

And if you can manage 7 consecutive workouts wearing a backpack on the treadmill, your level of mental training will be enough to get you to the finish line of any race.

TIP: if you have delicate flooring, put a towel down underneath.

SUMMARY TABLE OF EXERCISES
(email us at info@wildtee.it to get the Excel file where you can log and run your own simulations)

JUST FOR FUN

If you're not training for anything specific, and just want to stay in shape while having fun, I suggest making a bet with yourself.

Contrary to what I said earlier (or rather, following the #whateverdammit method, which I'll get into another time), include the warm-up in your training session, and try to compensate for the slower or less inclined start by cranking up speed and/or incline, aiming to hit the final average you bet on.

COMPATIBILITY WITH SPORTSWATCHES AND TRAINING PLATFORMS

Most sports watches have a "treadmill" mode that uses the built-in accelerometer to detect your speed even while staying in the same spot. You can calibrate it to align the data with your treadmill's readings. If you want to track your elevation gain, though, you'll need to enter it manually on Strava, since the watch isn't able to calculate it on its own. At the end of each session, your treadmill's display will show you the distance and average incline, multiply the two together and you'll get your D+.

TIP: when running uphill, your arm swing and the force you push them back with to generate momentum will be greater than when running on flat ground, so you'll need to calibrate your smartwatch differently to avoid getting a higher speed reading than your actual one. Run a 4-5 km test tracked by the treadmill, and adjust your watch, started at exactly the same moment, based on the distance covered according to the treadmill.

The Zwift platform recently introduced the option to run virtually along a route, or challenge your friends to a group run. Unfortunately, at the moment, it's only compatible with the Garmin Forerunner 245 and 945, a few footpods, and a handful of treadmills.

A full Wild Tee kit is, of course, mandatory even on the treadmill!

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