Running a Marathon on a Treadmill

A couple of days ago, on a Friday morning, I ran a marathon on a treadmill at my local gym, 26.2 miles or 42.2km in 4 hours and 2 minutes. This blog post has a look at why, what it was like running for that long inside and finishes with some hints and tips, plus a short video of the end of the run.

Why a Treadmill Marathon?

Even my fellow club runners asked this question after I’d published details of the run into Strava and on Facebook (you’re right, I did shout about it!). A fair few comments came in about me being a nutcase to be doing such a thing, which are quite reasonable I reckon! Here are the reasons why I did it:

• I felt fit enough to do it. I ran my first outdoor marathon three weeks ago, and am feeling really strong at the moment.
• I’d just read Rory Coleman’s book “A Rebel and a Runner“, in which he describes his incredible running life, including finishing the Marathon des Sables desert ultra-marathon 15 times.
• Fitness is temporary. I don’t know if I’ll injure myself tomorrow and never be able to run again. Now was the time.
• I’ve run a couple of half marathons on these same treadmills, and I know they’re mentally much harder than the same distance outside. I wanted to test my mental strength.
• I have a great life. Really, it’s bloody wonderful. But into every life some bad stuff must come, and I believe I can prepare my mind for it by pushing it in the good times, learning and (hopefully) stretching my limits before I need that strength in tougher times.
• The gym’s just up the road from me and the treadmills are good quality, and I didn’t have anything better to do…

Training for a Treadmill Marathon

I didn’t train specifically for the treadmill marathon. However, I have been running between 30 and 50 miles a week, including lots of long slow hilly runs, for almost a year now. My main aim for 2019 is the Zermatt-Gornergrat Ultra Marathon in July, which is 28 miles uphill at altitude. That’s only 2 months away, so I have to be able to easily manage the marathon distance on the flat to give me a good chance of completing that 6-hour-plus effort. The treadmill isn’t the same as road running though. It’s generally seen as being a little easier physically (there is no air resistance for example), but can be hard on the body, potentially damaging the Achilles for example. I didn’t taper from my usual running, and raced over 5 miles a couple of days before the run. I’ve also done a few hour-to-90 minute treadmill runs in the past weeks to see if my problematic right Achilles was OK with it, and it was. I ran a slow half marathon a couple of days afterwards without any problems too, so it must have been (physically) a relatively easy effort for me at the moment.

What it Felt Like to Run a Treadmill Marathon

While it might have not been a physical full-on effort, mentally is was a real struggle and took all of my usual mind tricks to get me to the end, and then some I didn’t know I had! I can’t state this enough: it was very, very hard to keep going. A few tears flowed at the end as I knelt on the belt, I was overcome with emotion.

I ran the first 13 miles at 11kph (8:47 min miles) without varying the pace. Our local gym’s treadmills are good quality, and will run forever – they don’t automatically stop when used for over an hour or two. They have screens where you can watch YouTube videos (there are some great Gornergrat Ultra ones) or watch a series of outdoor scenes, running through woods, alongside water below mountains and so on. I used these outdoor scenes rather than YouTube, as it’s quite hard trying to type on the touch screen while running.

That first half marathon was relatively easy. I wore a hydration pack with about 2 litres of water/orange juice/honey mix, and had a separate 75cl bottle with the same mixture. I also had a single salted date bar, which I started eating after an hour and then gnawed a bit more off every half an hour. Staying hydrated was probably my biggest physical challenge. The treadmill under a fan was being used when I arrived so I picked another one, and I hadn’t hydrated properly before the run so drank most of the 75cl bottle within the first half an hour. I ate an hour before the run though, a bowl of oats/hot water/peanut butter and sultanas, and didn’t feel like I was running out of energy, but did get thirsty in the last hour. Thankfully Ju arrived at the gym and refilled my bottle with water a couple of times. In all I got through around 4 litres of liquid.

The second half of the run was much more of a problem. Only Ju knew I was out for a long run, and even then she didn’t know I’d decided to have a crack at the full distance rather than going for a 20 miler. No-one in the gym would have known or minded if I’d given up at any point. Runners and walkers joined me either side for their runs but no-one lasted more than 30 minutes, and it felt very different to being in a marathon race, where all the runners around me were in the same boat. A big red button shone out from the screen the whole time “STOP”. Stopping would have been very easy.

I suspect the heat and sweat made the run more physically demanding than being outside, outweighing any advantage from being on a perfect rolling surface with no wind, and I found myself dropping the pace. I wore my wrist heart-rate monitor, so could keep an eye on it while I ran, and varied the pace to keep it below 160bpm (my max has been about 187bpm in the past few weeks, so I was running at about 85% of max). Shifting the pace up and down a little really helped I think, as I could put in more effort while I felt good and back off in the inevitable bad patches.

Having Ju in the room for the last hour was a huge advantage. By that point I’d nearly given up a couple of times but dug down a little more, knowing Ju was likely to arrive later on in the run. She went through her own routine rather than standing watching me, at least until I was within a few km of the end, but just knowing someone was there who cared whether I completed the distance was pure gold in terms of motivation.

Hints and Tips for an Indoor Marathon

Here are a few tips for the indoor marathon:

• I can heartily suggest it, it’s hard, but as with all these challenges, it’s worth every minute of struggle.
• Expect mental civil war to break out at some point and be prepared for it; as a runner, you’ll know what I’m talking about. On the treadmill I found this internal battle much harder to master, especially as it wasn’t part of a larger effort.
• If possible, get someone to support you through the run, bringing drinks, food and offering encouragement. Even better, also get someone to run the same distance on the treadmill next to you.
• Get a treadmill by a fan. I got a few wafts of cool air and would have loved to get a continual flow of air.
• I took a small towel to clear sweat from my arms and eyes, but stopped using it as it seemed to me making me lose even more water.
• Outdoor scenes are great to run to, but watch out for ones with tight turns as it’s easy to drift off to one side on the treadmill when you’re tired.
• Tell people you’re going to do it before you do, so you’re committed and can’t give up!
• Outdoors I break up runs into small sections. I found this much harder to do indoors. Having the km counter very slowly ticking upwards nearly drove me mad.
• Take clothes to keep you warm afterwards. I walked home with Ju, but couldn’t move very quickly and felt quite cold even with my running coat on.

Job Done

The job’s done now, and within the area of my head I use as a (rather empty) trophy cabinet, there’s a virtual medal hanging: Treadmill Marathon Finisher. For however many years I remain alive on this Earth, that small achievement can never be taken away, by anyone. Onwards and upwards, the usual training’s resumed now and I’m visualising being stood on the start line at St Niklaus in the Zermatt Valley, Switzerland with that monstrous effort ahead. I’m fearful of it. I’m at once convinced I can do it, while being nervous and uncertain, especially of the steeper upper reaches of the mountain side where it’s colder and the air’s thinning out. Ju has a bigger challenge though. Her injured knee’s prevented any running at all for these past couple of months, and she’s booked in for the half marathon part of the same run (which I did last year – and it was a tough run). With the help of our local physio in Kimberley (Nottingham) she ran 1km yesterday though, so there is hope she’ll manage the big one. Only one way to find out if our old bodies will manage these runs though, watch this space folks.

Here’s a short video with the final couple of km of the run, thanks to Ju for grabbing a few shots of me jogging along!

Cheers, Jay