It’s tough to escape the treadmill when the weather starts to turn. And while cruising through an easy run with entertainment is one thing, locking into intense speed intervals while staring at the same console is another. Without fresh scenery or a crew of training partners to pull you along, speedwork on the belt can test your focus before it tests your fitness.
Even professional runners know the feeling. When weather or logistics reroute a key workout indoors, they adapt and find ways to make the session productive, fast, and even fun. Here, eight pros share the treadmill workouts they rely on to turn indoor interval sessions into serious gains.
Pro runner: Joe Klecker, 2020 Olympian in the 10,000 meters, who made his marathon debut at the 2025 New York City Marathon and went on to earn a PR at the 2026 Boston Marathon, finishing in 2:05:56 for 13th place. Joe Klecker got this workout from his mother, Janis Klecker, a fellow Olympian who competed in the marathon in the 1992 Barcelona Games. Amanda Vestri’s build for her 26.2 debut at the 2025 New York City Marathon, where she ran a 2:25:40, included a decent amount of treadmill training with workouts created by her former coach, Pete Rea of the now-defunct ZAP Endurance Group, which was based in Blowing Rock, North Carolina.
The course is notoriously challenging and hilly, which was hard to closely simulate outside in North Carolina. Pro runner: Maggie Montoya, a professional marathoner with a personal best of 2:27:04, who trains with the Roots Running Project in Boulder. Maggie Montoya used to loathe treadmill running, resorting to it only on the worst winter days when she was in college, when icy conditions or poor air quality would make training outside unsafe.
She has since learned to embrace it now that she has a home treadmill and encounters those conditions more frequently. Champion, 2016 Olympian, and 2015 World Championships bronze medalist, all in the 10,000 meters. Emily Infeld has trained in Portland, Oregon for much of the last decade, which has made her no stranger to hopping on the treadmill to escape cold and rainy conditions.
It was pouring when I last did this, so it was nice to not have to deal with that on the road or track.” “I like this workout because I can listen to music and turn my brain off, and I can get it done quickly in the morning to optimize rest for my second session,” Infeld adds. Pro runner: Reed Fischer, who holds personal bests of 2:09:47 and 1:00:54 in the marathon and half marathon, respectively, and represented the U.S. in the marathon at the 2025 World Championships Reed Fischer, who grew up in Minnesota and now trains with Tin Man Elite in Boulder, is very familiar with treadmill training. Anything faster can feel a little chaotic, and the reps are usually shorter, which means more fiddling with the belt speed to speed up and slow down.
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