Treadmill vs hiking for aerobic workouts

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Topic
July 6, 2020 at 5:51 pm #43335

mzkarim
Participant

Hi,

I’m in Week 6 of the 24 week Mountaineering Plan. For the aerobic workouts as per the Plan, you need to maintain your HR in a certain range, like AeT minus 10 or 15. I’ve found that it’s much easier to maintain HR within specific ranges on a treadmill as opposed to hiking a mountain (at least the mountains I have easy access to). You can easily adjust the settings on the treadmill but on a trail you have to constantly go faster or slower to get your HR to be in that specific range. However, on the treadmill, I don’t get any elevation gain even with a 15% incline. On hiking trails, I get elevation gains, but HR is usually too low (usually around 90 on average – my AeT is 142). What’s the best strategy to get both HR and elevation gain?
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Posted In: General Training Discussion

Participant

Rachel on July 6, 2020 at 6:43 pm #43337

I increase my pace or the slope to up my HR. I’ll set a narrow HR zone on my watch, and run if needed (or slow to a crawl) to keep it in the range. But why don’t you get vert on the treadmill? 15% should result in elevation gain unless the treadmill is broken. Or are you not able to reach your vert goal?

Participant

mzkarim on July 6, 2020 at 8:04 pm #43339

My Garmin watch does not give any elevation gain for treadmill runs (see attachment) and the Training Peaks workout then shows 0 elevation gain. Maybe I could use a Stairclimber and calculate the elevation based on the number of steps or floors that the Stairclimber records? This would be for the workouts that require elevation, not the recovery ones.

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Participant

mzkarim on July 6, 2020 at 8:45 pm #43343

The above example was a 2-hour treadmill run at 15% incline, but no elevation was recorded.

Participant

Dada on July 7, 2020 at 5:31 am #43345

mzkarim, you need ro calculate your elavation gain from the treadmill using a calculator 😉 and then edit your workouts.

Good luck!

Participant

mzkarim on July 7, 2020 at 6:02 am #43346

Thanks, Dada. How would I calculate elevation gain using a calculator?

Participant

Rachel on July 7, 2020 at 6:49 am #43347

I usually snap a pic of the treadmill console so I can input everything into TP afterwards. I just googled and there are online calculators where you input grade and horizontal distance and it’ll spit out the elevation gain.

Participant

mzkarim on July 7, 2020 at 6:57 am #43348

Wow, that was so easy! I’m getting almost 5,000 feet of elevation for my 2-hour, 6-mile treadmill runs. Thanks so much guys!

Inactive

Anonymous on July 10, 2020 at 2:12 pm #43465

For miles: MILES x 5,280 x INCLINE_% = VERTICAL_FEET

For km: KM x 1,000 x INCLINE_% = VERTICAL_M

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