Ryan Ploeckelman co-hosts Ryan and Gretchen in the Morning on Q108
I am not going to pull any punches here. Treadmills stink, they are awful, and they suck all the joy out of running. I hope whoever invented them is on some endless hamster wheel in hell right now. Running is about going places, not watching a movie or TV show in a health club. That being said, they can be useful to a runner from time to time.
I am a big fan of running in whatever Mother Nature has in store for the day. Running in rain and snow can be a blast. Jumping in puddles makes you feel like a kid again. There are some times though, and they are few and far between, that Mother Nature loses her mind and it’s not safe to run outdoors, like in a severe thunderstorm, or tornado, or the streets you run on are all flooded. Then and only then go ahead and enjoy some guilt free miles on the treadmill.
Running on a treadmill is different from running on the road or trail. For some people their stride makes it easier to go at a faster pace on the treadmill than what they do on the road. My stride is the kind that makes it much easier to go faster on the road or trail than the treadmill. Run by effort and time on the treadmill, those “minutes per mile” numbers are worthless. It is also import to set the incline to at least one percent to help simulate outdoor running a little better.
For those over achievers out there a treadmill can come in handy for hill work. We have some hills here in Clarksville, but nothing that takes more than a minute or two to get over. Setting the treadmill at full incline for ten or twenty minutes can give you a really good workout that you can’t get out in nature here. My buddy Kyle Curtin likes to set the treadmill at full incline and go for a solid hour. He does this workout at least once a week when training for an ultra, and the guy has won two 100-mile ultramarathons, so he knows what he is doing. I call that workout the “Curtin Call.”
New runners tend to hate hills and avoid them like the plague. Embrace them. They make you stronger, and every hill you conquer makes the next one easier. I saw a shirt once that said, “It’s a Hill, Get Over It.” I think that is the perfect mantra when it comes to hills.
Treadmills can be a tool to help a runner achieve their goals, but I urge you to do the bulk of your running outside. You can’t simulate a race on a treadmill and besides a good movie you will never see the things on a treadmill that you will see out in the world. Did I ever tell you about the time I accidentally kicked a squirrel at Rotary Park? Stuff like that doesn’t happen on the dreadmill.
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