Treadmill Training for Vertical

Right now I'm healing from a knee injury. I set a PR on a 1.3 mile downhill run, about 1,300' of downhill vertical. It's a -19% average, according to Strava. At one point I was doing an 8:00 pace. I normally don't go downhill that fast, but was in a group of 18-20 year olds, and this old man wanted to keep up with the kids. Alas...

I took a few weeks off and then started running outside, but since the trails here tend to go up out, and down back, it was really beating up my knees and they weren't going to heal. So now it's the treadmill for me.

Trail running along a cliff face in Summit County Colorado

Since I have some running specific goals regarding mileage, I had to up the speed considerably from my usual incline treadmill training, which is more specific to vertical goals

Enough about me, here's how it works.

When you up the inclination of your treadmill it changes your speed quite a bit, depending on how far up you go. Running at 2% or 4% or 6% are quite a bit different from one another. When you're walking that isn't a very broad range, but for running it makes a big difference in speed.

In "Summit Success: Training for Hiking, Mountaineering, and Peak Bagging" CLICK HERE there are charts for training at up to 15% for a standard treadmill and even more for a special incline treadmill. They're meant for averaging around 2.0 MPH at 15% to as low as 1.0 MPH at 24%. If you're wanting to go at 4.0 MPH or 5.0 MPH or more, you'll need to drop the incline quite a bit when you first start.

Here's an example of the training goal charts adjusted for 4.0%:

Week	Target Weekly Vertical Ft	Weekly Miles at 4%	Incline Miles Per Session (x4)	Incline Minutes/Session @ 5.0 MPH
5	1,130	5.349	1.337	16
6	1,255	5.943	1.486	18
7	1,395	6.604	1.651	20
8	1,550	7.338	1.834	22
9	1,722	8.153	2.038	24
10	1,913	9.059	2.265	27
11	2,126	10.065	2.516	30
12	2,362	11.184	2.796	34
13	2,624	12.426	3.107	37
14	2,916	13.807	3.452	41
15	3,240	15.341	3.835	46
16	3,600	17.045	4.261	51

Notice that over the course of the 12 weeks represented here you work your way up to 3,600' of vertical per week. That's pretty good for being inside.

The first four weeks are missing in this spreadsheet because it was adapted from the book, and the first four weeks are meant to get you off the couch and up to that first 5 mile week.

If you'd like to see spreadsheets, register (upper right) for the newsletter and I'll send some your way for other common running inclinations, and vertical per week goals.