Incline on a treadmill questions. Please help

If you had 1 mile of 650 ft. of elevation at a race, what would you incline a treadmill to in order to train for that hill. The event is a 5 person marathon relay. This leg is 5 miles long with the first mile going up hill. My sister is new to this and wants to train for the hill and race. She has been doing a lot of training on the treadmill, due to the Texas heatwave.  Thanks in advance for your input.

How to Calculate Treadmill Incline.
This could be hard because what your treadmill lists as incline position 2 could be 3 on my treadmill or 4 at the gym etc.  You actually need to measure the difference between when it's flat and when it is elevated and then do some math to determine what the percentage is.

But for the road assuming that it is flat at the beginning or starting point and rises to 650 feet over the course 1 mile 5280 feet you divide 650/5280 and then multiply that by 100 this will give you the percentage 12.31% is the grade if all 650 feet come in the first mile.

But if the 650 feet are spread over 5 miles 650/26400 the average grade is only 2.64%

 

Here is an article with more info

http://www.livestrong.com/article/37738-calculate-treadmill- incline/

The other thing you could do is go to ride with gps or map my ride and draw the course on their site.  It will show you the hills and give you the average grade etc.  You can mouse over it and it will give you all the details you want.

Their accounts are free and a great training tool to track who, what, where, when, and how you did

Like this for example

http://ridewithgps.com/trips/292933

 

Thank you!!

ummmm..... what he said :)

 just as a side conversation... I don't think elevation on a tm is necesarily a great substitute for actual hill training.. I mean its the next best thing if you can't get on an actual hill, but I have found running up real hills versus treadmill is a lot different on the muscles, probably because out on the road you need to use your quads and calves a lot more completely through the step up the hill, whereas on a treadmill, the tread (ground) is moving, actually taking some of the pressure off that load carrying leg (and muscles..).   I'm no physiologist, just know I can do some mega workouts with some big elevations on a TM, but not even come close on an actual hill... hence, I would use Scott's methods, but add in a bit more elevation to account for a tm being a bit easier on a climb.  

Maybe I am ranting :)  

I agree with the added incline to make up the difference.  I forgot to post that in my initial response.

I use this chart to help simulate my hills

http://www.trinewbies.com/tno_running/run_treadmill_chart.as p

They recommend 1% just to simulate flat ground.

I usually set it at 1-2 for my "flat workouts"
When I have the treamill flat, it feels like I'm running down hill.  Less effort.

Scott

This was the site that I used to determine the steepness of my local hills that I used to train for the Mt. Washington Road Race.

http://veloroutes.org/tools/

I agree with Andrew about using actual hills as opposed to the treadmill. The benefit of the treadmill is that it is a never ending hill and the closest hills that I could find within 45 minutes of me were a half mile at the longest. On the TM however, I found it easy to get discouraged and walk more than I wanted to. On actual hills, there is a finish which made it easier to bear down and finish.

I think there is an individual factor too. I find the treadmill to be harder than running outside so I never have to do things to it to make it harder.

But I only use the treadmill to do runs where I want to hold a steady pace. And once in a while if it's hot and I'm feeling too whimpy to just run outside anyway.