We’ve just got some pretty decent treadmills at work, so I did my usual cragg vale hill reps session on one of them. My logic was, I didn’t have the hassle of having to run back down hill a few miles on road after.
It was definitely hard, but even maximum gradient (15%) didn’t ‘seem’ that steep.
Cragg vale is about 5 miles long with 950 feet of climb. That puts the average gradient of my road reps at only 3.6% according to the calculator below:
http://www.csgnetwork.com/inclinedeclinegradecalc.html
Even taking into account the fact that my actual reps take place on the steeper sections of cragg vale, it still wouldn’t be anywhere near 15%.
In fact 15% is nearly 800 ft per mile!
So my question is, are treadmill gradients anywhere near as equivalent as the same % incline on the roads?
Reply With Quote