Treadmill vs hiking for aerobic workouts | Uphill Athlete

Treadmill vs hiking for aerobic workouts

  • Creator
    Topic
  • #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?

  • Participant
    Rachel on #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 #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.

    Attachments:
    You must be logged in to view attached files.
    Participant
    mzkarim on #43343

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

    Participant
    Dada on #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 #43346

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

    Participant
    Rachel on #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 #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 #43465

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

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

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)
  • The forum ‘General Training Discussion’ is closed to new topics and replies.