The Gym Way or The Highway

Hi runners,

I've been reviewing my past training runs over the last year and noted that a lot of my running had been done on the treadmill in a gym. A couple of runners I know personally loathe running on the treadmill for various reasons, and at one stage I was curious to know whether treadmill running is better than road running.

There's a lot of talk on the subject on which is better, with differing opinions from everyone. I'm probably not helping in adding my opinion amongst the many others. What I can say is that it comes with my experience, it is how I train personally, and it is what applies to me. And I think it has helped me become a better runner at the end of it all.

I have to say that I love running on the treadmill. When I moved back to the UK, I was fortunate to get access to a treadmill at work. The treadmill allows me to run at a certain pace for a certain time, and it also allows me to adjust the incline when I want. I've only started running on the treadmill when I was preparing for the Reading Half Marathon last year, and I felt that it has yielded a lot of benefit to my running.

Because of the controlled pace that the belt moves, I can choose a certain pace on the treadmill and train against that pace for a particular period of time. When running on the road it's quite difficult to know exactly how fast you run and/or how long you're running for (which springs to mind, does a Garmin Forerunner or other fancy device do this for you?).

The cold English winter, or any inclement weather, doesn't make running particularly enjoyable, especially when you can be more prone to illnesses. Treadmill running can be the perfect substitute for road running if conditions aren't that ideal.

Finally the treadmill surface, and the impact, is a little more forgiving than the road. For me there's always that assurance that you're not wasting your knees running on a treadmill, as opposed to hitting the asphalt or the concrete.

Treadmill running does have its disadvantages. The most obvious is that it doesn't model racing at all, whereas running on the road does. Your biomechanics on the treadmill will be different to running on the road. Try running on both surfaces and you'll find that it feels "different". This explains why some people find it harder to run on the treadmill than on the road.

For me, I try to balance my running carefully between the treadmill and the road so that I am used to both. But I always reserve my faster efforts for the treadmill, i.e. I don't do many of my easy runs on the treadmill. I think for specific types of speed work the treadmill is ideal.

For a more scientific explanation (and more) of what I've tried to say earlier, you can read this interesting article.

Best,

Aaron