Incline question - surprised myself!

[Bexmumrun]

Considered myself very unfit after having to bed rest through my last pregnancy. Decided to finally do something 3 years on and I’ve somehow made it to the start of week 8! However done this all on a treadmill and only just seen the advice on putting an incline of 1-2% on to replicate outdoors (never run outdoors). Should I start an incline now or am I risking a run failure? I feel psychologically if I up the incline now and then don’t finish it I’ll be really disappointed. I’m already going at just a slow jog so don’t think I can slow down much further! Any advice please?

[2718281 Graduate]

Hi bexmumrun, the incline is used to compensate the effect of moving through the air. Moving outside at the same speed as in the treadmill requires more effort. The difference in effort is speed dependent, the faster you go, the larger the difference. I would need to check the numbers but I think it was somewhere around 8min per mile that you would see a noticeable difference. So if you are going that fast and you want to replicate the effort, you can use the incline.

If on the other hand you are not going that fast, or you are not worried about the effort and just about completing the minutes, don't be bothered about it.

I completed c25k on a treadmill, and though I still use it for most of my runs, I've done parkrun without any issues. If you are that close to completing the program, I would say just finish as you started. When you start to consolidate, you can play with the incline, add 5 minutes now and then and see how it feels, without the stress of pushing too hard and not completing a run

[Redvic97 Graduate]

I’m on a treadmill with no incline and have decided to continue as is so that I can say I’ve completed it. Then I’m going to go outdoors starting perhaps with an earlier week. For me it’s about the confidence that I can run for 30 minutes and that will then give me the confidence to know I can do it outside. I completely understand how you might feel disappointed at this stage if you change how you’ve gone about it so far. That’s how I feel. No clear answer I know but hope it helps to know someone else is in the same position 😊

[John_W Graduate Ambassador]

Absolutely completely unnecessary to put any incline on while doing C25K . Its only relevant for advanced runners - those who are much much faster.