Treadmill incline (Read 766 times)

Due to time pressures I do most of my training on a treadmill during my lunch breaks from work. I can usually squeeze a 4 mile run in. Previously I have set the incline to 0.5, but this last week or so I have put it up 1.0 Now to me that doesn't sound like much of an increase - but boy has it made a difference. I am no speed merchant, but I recently I have been completing my runs at around the 32min mark (8min per mile) but since the incline increase today is the first time i have broken 33mins in 6 attempts. So my question is - 'should it be making as much difference as it is', and would i be better trying to lower my times with the machine on flat rather than trying to increase the incline?

I do not know of the discussions Trishie is referring to- and I am no expert on treadmills. As a matter of fact I very rarely run on a treadmill but when I do I run at 1-1.5 %, occassionally a little more. I have a chart somewhere that shows so-called equivalents of treadmill speeds/elevations to road speeds. I will try to find it and post it for you.

I was told by some of the other runners that I shoudl try to put the treadmill at a 5% incline, but I was not able to run at all with such an incline. I think it is harder to run with more of an incline, but I think you adjust quickly.

5% is a lot of incline to run with all the time -- that's like constant hill training. I've heard the 1% figure quite a few times before. Often it was asserted that the 1% compensated for the fact that there's no air resistance on a treadmill. However, in this discussion, it was pointed out that air resistance is negligible for most training speeds. However, I still think 1% treadmill is probably a reasonable setting. When you run on the roads, you're pushing off of (hopefully) static ground. On a treadmill, the movement of the belt is doing some of that work for you, so a small incline would seem to be in order to even things out. Cheers, Jeff

I have put the t-mill on 1% incline and done all of my speedwork there. Come to find out I am faster on the track! So I think that a .5% incline may be the ticket, or a .5% incline with some light wind from a fan blowing on you. Can we mimick precisely? hehe

I am a novice runner who just started running in August. I began on the treadmill at the gym set at 0% when i built up sometime on that i tried to run outdoors and had a tough go of it. I continued to run outdoors until December when I had to take time off because of work. When I started up again in March I mixed outdoors with my home treadmill. It took some time to get back in the swing of things but I find myself faster outside. My home treadmill's lowest incline is 1.5% and have a 12:30 or so pace. Outdoors my pace is closer to 11:00 so it seems to make a big difference to me.