Can training on a treadmill make you faster on the road?

I’ve spent the last three or four weeks running on a treadmill in the gym because the weather here is so crappy. I don’t like running in the freezing rain and wind, so the only other real option is the treadmill.

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Things have been going quite well in the gym. I’ve been tweaking my running technique and experimenting to see how fast I can go. I’ve seen some surprising gains and yesterday I beat my 10k PR by 6 minutes. I was pretty happy with that!

That’s all very well and good you might say. But not a lot of races are run on treadmills. And it’s true – most races are run outside, in the real world. I was really interested to see if I could translate the gains on the treadmill to the street. Have I just been wasting my time, or has this been valuable training?

This morning the rain slept in, but I didn’t. I was up and out into the still morning air. Even the sun was still snoring, off to the east somewhere. I’m back home now and the sun still hasn’t managed to drag itself out of bed. I don’t blame it. It is winter after all.

I did what I usually do on the treadmill, the first kilometre is a warmup, but it’s a fast warmup. This simulates a race start where you don’t usually jog for the first 5kms or so to get warmed up – you just go out hard right from the start. I hit the pavement hard and bounded down the hill with 80s music blasting in my ears.

The first km zipped by – at the rate I used to sprint at. And then I hit the slightly downhill section and put the hammer down. I was running at under 5min/km – a super fast speed for me and not sustainable for more than a few hundred metres. That was until I started the treadmill work.

I kept up the sub 5min/km pace for most of the run, except for a couple of kilometres where I had to stop and retie my shoe before it fell off and I went careering into the sea, and on the hill where I usually walk up because by that time I’m usually knackered.

My previous PR for 10km was 56 minutes on my 10km circuit.

Today I ran the same circuit in 49 minutes. That’s a 7 minute gain! But more importantly at the end of that 10kms I wasn’t collapsing and gasping for breath. I was glad to be done, but I wasn’t completely spent. I think I could have carried on at that pace for a while longer.

I don’t think I can run much faster than that – the mechanics of my little legs just won’t allow it. But if I can keep that pace up that will certainly improve my time for the Wellington Marathon on the 1st of July.

So I guess that answers the question I posed above – the training you do on the treadmill can and does translate to the real world.

But I think the secret is in how you approach the running on the treadmill. If you ‘just run’ mindlessly I don’t think you will see a lot of benefit.

If you ‘train’, working on technique, pushing your speed, trying stuff out, making it hard, then it will translate to the road and you will see the benefits of it.

This is my last week of training before I really hit the taper and let my legs have a bit of a rest. I could really feel the fatigue in them when I started running this morning. So with a couple of weeks of lighter running, they should be nice and hungry come race day.

I’m really looking forward to this race, and the WUU2K a couple of weeks after it. It’s going to be a big test of all the training and learning that I’ve done this year. And this will set me up (hopefully) to face my biggest challenge yet – a 100km race.

I’m finding again and again that something is only impossible because you haven’t done it yet.
When someone tells you that what you want to do is impossible, change the word in your head to hard. What you want to do is hard. Hard is doable – it just requires dedicated work and effort and you can make it happen.

This is what I’m finding with my running. It was impossible for me to run under 5min/km for more than 100 metres. But today I did just that for 7 out of the 10 kilometres I covered. So it wasn’t impossible at all – it was just hard. And* hard* is something that is becoming easier the more I do it.

So tomorrow I think I’ll……. Take it easy hehe. My body deserves a bit of a rest now. But you can bet that soon I’ll be back out there doing what I do – pushing hard to get home in time for beer and ice-cream.

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