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Does your treadmill run count if you don’t take a picture?

Where do you stand on this heated debate?

Treadmill half marathon

It’s that time of year when your Strava timeline is flooded with morning runs captioned “dreadmill,” with no GPS map in sight. Upon further investigation, there’s no heart rate data on the treadmill post, either. The question is: did they even run?

Enter the Strava police, ready to investigate every little detail of your 5K easy run at 6.0 mph. These individuals are on a mission to determine if the run was real, or just an attempt to pad that weekly training log with some phantom kilometres. Without a running watch equipped with a treadmill function, many runners resort to the tried-and-true method of taking a picture of the screen to show pace, duration and distance to prove they got it done.

Treadmill workout summary

One runner compared a pictureless treadmill upload to a tree falling in the woods: “If there’s no picture, how can we be completely sure it happened?” the anonymous runner asks.

Some runners even go beyond proving they actually ran, hooking up cadence foot pods, heart rate straps and Zwift with time-stamped photos and videos showing they really did run for 45 minutes. While many just head to the treadmill to run in peace without any distractions or having to document every step, they still face heat from the non-believers.

But all jokes aside, why would anyone post a treadmill run if they weren’t doing it? Surely, the thought and mental fatigue of spending an hour on a treadmill (which equals two hours outside–kidding!) is enough to deter any ghost runs.

sweaty guy on treadmill

In a world where if it’s not on Strava, it didn’t happen, the treadmill dilemma continues to divide the online running community. Whether you’re a relentless defender of photographic proof or a Strava minimalist who believes running is an escape that doesn’t need to be documented 24/7, one thing is clear: the debate is far from over.

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