Treadmill Distance and Speed Query

martyeds

First of all if, i am not sure if this is better in this forum or the Health and Fitness forum so feel free to move if you see fit.

I am new to running and i visit my local gym a few times per week to run on treadmills. I always select the 5km run, but it displays the distance that i cover in miles. Its counts down from 3.12.
My question is.......if i run at a speed of 8....am i running at 8 miles or km per hour.

Brianderunner

martyeds wrote: »

First of all if, i am not sure if this is better in this forum or the Health and Fitness forum so feel free to move if you see fit.

I am new to running and i visit my local gym a few times per week to run on treadmills. I always select the 5km run, but it displays the distance that i cover in miles. Its counts down from 3.12.
My question is.......if i run at a speed of 8....am i running at 8 miles or km per hour.

Simple maths involved there. 8 miles p/h is 7'30 miling, which is 23'18 for 5k. 8 km/hr is quite significantly slower and is 12 min miling and would take you 37 mins plus. It should be fairly obvious based on that.

huskerdu

martyeds wrote: »

First of all if, i am not sure if this is better in this forum or the Health and Fitness forum so feel free to move if you see fit.

I am new to running and i visit my local gym a few times per week to run on treadmills. I always select the 5km run, but it displays the distance that i cover in miles. Its counts down from 3.12.
My question is.......if i run at a speed of 8....am i running at 8 miles or km per hour.

How long does it take you to run 5k / 3.12 miles ?

If you are running at 8km/hr then 5k will take you 37.5 minutes

If you are running at 8miles/hr then 5k will take you 23 minutes

Sorry, Brian, crossed with your post

Sprocket77

You'll know yourself just from the feel of it. 8km per hour would be just above a fast walking pace, 8 mile per hour is 12.8km per hour and you'd be running at that pace.

RayCun

Here's a table for converting between mph, kmph, mins/mile, km/mile

martyeds

Thanks for the replies guys. I was hard for me to judge because i would run but then slow down to a quick walking pace to catch my breath and then up the pace again.
In other words if i want to do under 30 mins for a 5km i should keep to a steady pace of 6.3.
I havent undertaken much physical activity in recent years and was looking to get back into shape. My aim is to do sub 30 mins for 5 Km. I think my main problem is i go to quickly to begin with and then struggle.

RayCun

You should try following a structured plan, like couch25k.

martyeds

Thanks Raycun. I'll give that a go. In the sections where you jog, what speed in your opinion would you need to be doing on a treadmill to be jogging?

RayCun

martyeds wrote: »

Thanks Raycun. I'll give that a go. In the sections where you jog, what speed in your opinion would you need to be doing on a treadmill to be jogging?

The couch25k programme doesn't say what speed you should go at - you run at whatever your running speed is, you walk at whatever your walking speed is. Everybody starts off running too fast, and when the running intervals get longer they can't keep it up, so you have to find out for yourself what speed you can maintain.

And give running outdoors a chance - don't need to worry about treadmill controls there...

niallb

I'm just on the last week (wk9) of the Couch25K programme and am really pleased with how it worked out. I repeated week 7, and had to take a break after hurting my foot last week, but went out this morning and had no trouble running for 30 minutes.
3 months ago, I couldn't run for 1 minute without being out of breath.

I'd recommend getting hold of Robert Ullrey's podcasts.
Whether or not you like the music, he's good company through the programme,
and the bit of encouragement goes a long way when you're upping the pace or distance.
Using something like runkeeper works for a lot of people, as you can see when your friends are going out, which can be a good incentive on a wet morning.
If you use it on your phone or ipod, it also lets you watch your own improvements too.

I'm planning on getting a treadmill in the next few weeks to cover weeks of heavy snow, but so far I've done all my running outdoors. Our local GAA club has a track which is lit until 10PM, and they encourage use of it, plus we live in the country, and there's a few good 4km-10km loops right on our doorstep.

I'm now planning on pushing the speed and distance for a bit while staying at 30 minutes per session, and then heading for 10 km a few times a week next year.
I'm doing 5k in about 33+ minutes at the moment, and am knocking a few more seconds off every time I go out.

Good luck with your goal martyeds. C25K is a great way to get there.