Trail running training and treadmill
The need
I live in a super flat region, which means training for trail races is not easy, as I either have to drive 3h back/forth to run ~30k/1000m elevation (the closest "interesting" spot I have), or drive to the French Alps for a weekend (like I did during my shock weekend at Aiguebelette).
The other option was to use a treadmill with a decent incline (at least 12%), which meant either going to the gym, or buying one.
I decided for the latter, since that allowed me not having to drive to the gym, and running whenever I would like to / was available.
Choice process
I checked Decathlon but the only treadmill with 12% incline was not available.
Then other brands/stores did not have great reviews online, so I decided not to go that route.
I then leaned towards a Nordictrack treadmill, as they had an excellent review -
I looked at the EXP 10i, which looked really great.
I then checked online, the excellent website treadmillreviews.net had an
article where they
confirmed it was good, but also confirmed that you had to buy into the iFit
technology (basically $40 monthly plan for workouts).
This article mentioned another treadmill brand: Horizon, and its 7.4 AT, which they also reviewed.
Same price, but with an incline of 15% (as opposed to 12% with the Nordictrack), and a much more basic screen, leaving you the choice to use a tablet with an app for the advanced workout part.
They also linked to the more affordable 7.0 AT (see this article), which, given my expectations, would be more than enough.
I looked for resellers in France, and found Fitshop which had great reviews, and ordered it.
Receiving and assembling it
The treadmill got delivered early on a Monday, and wow it's quite a thing!
We struggled to put it where we wanted as it is wider than the indoor doors, but
we made it.
Assembling it was fairly easy, although a bit long because I was super cautious, reading both the documentation and checking Horizon's YouTube videos to make sure I did it properly.
But in roughly 90 minutes the treadmill was assembled and I could do my first test walk/run!
Using it
As I explained above, I went for a simpler treadmill with no fancy screen or connectivity, with the idea to use external services such as Kinomap for advanced activities.
Still, even for casual/regular runs, the console does a good job and is super
easy to use. The "quick incline/quick speed" shortcuts are super useful.
My wife and kids now use the treadmill by themselves, and that was after a 30
seconds demo I did.
Using Kinomap
In my case, I was after a slightly more advanced use, and I had seen Kinomap's features, so the first thing I did was downloading the Kinomap app on my phone, and connecting it to the treadmill.
It's really easy to do, and the first tests were successful: "free ride" where I would change the incline from the phone would be reflected on the treadmill, no issue at all.
However, when I created a custom workout, with e.g.:
- 5 min at 0% incline,
- 10 min at 12% incline,
- 10 min at 15% incline
I encountered a problem: the incline sent to the treadmill was wrong (2% instead of 12, and so on).
I have contacted the Kinomap support and they told me it was not normal, but they never saw such an issue and could not help.
The one thing I haven't tested yet is the "outdoor videos" feature, where you select a run (in my case) and you have a video of e.g. the Chamonix trails, with the corresponding elevation sent to your treadmill. I suspect I'd encounter the same issue with the wrong incline being sent to the treadmill, so I'll wait for the problem to be fixed by Kinomap support to try.
Using the treadmill without app
Since Kinomap did not work for me, I used the treadmill on a couple of runs "as it", and in fact it works really well - I just have to go for simple runs, such as:
- 15 min flat at 10 km/h
- 20 min at 15% elevation at 6 km/h
- 10 min flat at 8 km/h
- etc.
This makes it easy to calculate how much elevation I ran:
- 0.67 km ran at 15% incline makes 100m of elevation
So I have a little sticker on my treadmill to remind me of that.
I recently did a 1h25 run with 910m of elevation, hard to beat if I had to go to my usual "elevation area" (3h driving back and forth).
Wrap Up
Overall, I'm really pleased with this treadmill - granted, it's an investment
(although I had a very good deal on it), but I'm saving time and money by not
having to drive far away to find some elevation.
Plus, I can squeeze a run much more easily.
I'll use it as part of my preparation to my next Ultra trail in 2025.
Tags: Running