Do Competitive Marathoners Do Tempo Runs on a Treadmill When the Weather Is Bad?

Outdoor runs can offer beautiful scenery, fresh air, varied terrain and actual course training. But when bad weather compromises your outdoor running route with rain, wind, snow or worse, you may want to take your training inside to the treadmill. Competitive marathoners use treadmills for training both during bad weather and as an integral part of their consistent coached workouts for race preparation. While runners of any distance can incorporate intervals, hill work and tempo runs on treadmills for effective training, marathoners and longer distance runners reap the largest rewards from tempo runs.

  1. Tempo Runs for Olympians

    • Rod DeHaven and Christine Clark, past winners of the U.S. Olympic Trials Marathons, both used treadmill training for a large part of their training. An Alaskan, exposed to the consistently compromising wintry elements of the weather, Clark trained for her winning marathon primarily on her personal treadmill. Other champions, like Kara Goucher, a 2008 Olympian runner, enjoy tempo runs on treadmills because their automatic settings allow them to get into a running zone without the worry of maintaining a specific pace.

    Establish Proper Pace

    • For treadmill tempo runs to be effective, you want to make sure you are running at an appropriate pace. A tempo run is a consistently paced run of typically 20 minutes at a pace that is 20 to 30 seconds slower than your 5K race pace. Of course, when you are training for a marathon, you can vary this standard to incorporate tempo runs of 9 miles at a pace between your half-marathon and marathon pace. Two tempo runs every three weeks is a good goal during the climax of your marathon training.

    Set It and Forget It

    • While treadmills may not allow you to experience real life course training, they do have their advantages. After you have determined an appropriate tempo run pace, you can set it on your treadmill and forget worrying about running too quickly or slowly for the remainder of your run. As your running improves, you can easily adjust your treadmill speed setting to accommodate your new pace for race-preparing tempo run training.

    Reap the Rewards

    • Regardless of your pace and despite how long you have been running, treadmill tempo runs are particularly advantageous for marathoners of all fitness levels. That's because tempo runs improve lactate threshold pace, the fastest pace you can maintain without generating too much lactic acid. Because performance in longer distance runs depends primarily on this factor, incorporating tempo runs in your training, in good weather and bad, will improve your marathon performance.