devashish_paul wrote:
I find you can do more intensity, more often on the treadmill largely because if you do hill repeats, you're not having to run downhill....so you can do long hill intervals or continuous uphill runs too, that you generally can't do outdoors. Also the treadmill offers the opportunity to do intensity runs when outside running may not be ideal ( ice, snow, different city with bad running location etc). But other than that, you can't beat running outdoors. When running outdoors there is a lot more coordination, balance, and timing in play. It seems like that should be trivial, but having gone through a fairly bad head injury a few years ago, I have found that outdoor running takes a lot more mental effort. For "able bodied" athletes, you probably don't notice this, but it does take more background processing in a long race that you probably don't realize you are doing. On a treamilll you don't have to do that as there are no variations in terrain, footing, light, wind, sun etc. It all adds up to more than you realize.I develop blisters on the balls of my feet from running hill repeats on a treadmill. Do you?
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