Elbrus Race Treadmill Training Example

After my article about Treadmill Training Guidelines, I thought it would be a good idea to include one of my own treadmill training sessions as an example. Yesterday I ran outside. It was cold and windy, especially on the return trip. I went a little over 2 miles up the road and turned around. I tried to stay consistent in my speed each way, slower up and faster down. We got over 3' of new snow in Summit County Colorado last week, and it's packing down slowly. Though my favorite route on Keystone Gulch Road is often used by snowcat and snowmobiles for the resort employees and Ski Patrol at the resort, their tracks weren't all that solid yet. I was leaving 3-6" deep tracks in the snow, with my toes digging in quite a bit on the push-off. It was made a bit worse because yesterday morning I did a high volume deadlift workout with 10 sets of 10 for my working sets, followed by 6 sets of 10 assisted pullups. I really felt my glutes while running.

Trail Running in loose snow is a heck of a workout

Today I planned on a treadmill workout. I planned on averaging over 1000 VAM over the course of the workout. I chose 28% elevation and cruised along gently over the first 20 minutes working my way up past 2.0 MPH. Then I did some long intervals at 3.0 mph. Finally I felt hot enough that I did 6 intervals of 1:00 at 4.0 MPH with 1:00 at 2.0 MPH rest. At the end of that I did a couple of minutes at 2.0 MPH and 5 or so minutes at 3.0 MPH, 2.0 MPH to rest, and then one more interval at 4.0 MPH. I spent the remainder of the 64 minutes at 3.0 MP

Movescount reporting from my Suunto Ambit 2 S showing obvious intervals

I was shooting for 3500' on the display, though I know that the NordicTrack Incline Treadmills under-report the elevation stats as you increase the elevation. I have mentioned this a time or two or more in various blog and Facebook posts. At 3500' of elevation I shut down the treadmill and got off to rest, keeping the watch going for a few minutes to record my recovery. I think it's interesting to see how long my body takes to slow down the heart rate depending on my interval volume. Note too that this treadmill sits at a tad over 9300' in elevation.

NordicTrack Incline Treadmill Display after my interval training

I used my Incline Treadmill Calculator CLICK HERE to run the numbers from the console. They were right on with my plan. It's kind of fun to do complicated time and distance and speed math while cranking along at over 160 BPM heart rate and get your VAM goal pretty much right on.

My Incline Treadmill Calculator Shows my Elevation Gain and VAM

Here are the stats in text format:

Time: 64:27
Distance: 2.578
Incline: 28%
Elevation Gain: 3811.32'
Average MPH: 2.4
Average Pace: 25:00
Vertical/Hour: 3548'
Vertical/Minute: 59.14'
VAM: 1081.5

In the context of Elbrus Race, that is roughly equivalent to doing a one hour Qualifier. Though there is no award given for the Qualifier, that's definitely good enough to place. In the context of training in Colorado that's good enough for a one hour Grays or Quandary, both of which I've done in 1:30. My intermediate goal this summer is to beat 1:20 for both.

If you want to make the jump to doing VAM greater than 1000 the treadmill is a reasonably safe environment and forces you to keep your foot turnover rate high enough. You can also shoot to improve your steep vertical "running" technique. At 28% and 4.0 mph and a foot-strike cadence over 160 (I actually counted during my intervals) your heels never touch the belt. I wore New Balance minimalist shoes for this workout to improve my plantar strength. I have worn them on my Mount Royal hill-climbs, but have yet to wear them on Quandary or Grays.

So that's probably a lot more than you needed to know. Share your thoughts with me about how you could incorporate this type of training into your program.