iTread, Set 25, 40 Minutes (Top 40)

Length: 42 minutes

Format:

~ Warm-up run (4.5 min)

~ Hill song - 3% (3.5 min)

~ Speed up songs (9 min)

~ Hill song - 6% & 8% (4.5 min) with a few short walking breaks

~ Fast song (1.5 min)

~ Hill song - 3% (2.5 min)

~ Steady song (4 min)

~ Cool down (1.5 min)

~ Stretch (2 min)

I haven’t done a huge number of iTread workouts yet, but this is the first one I’ve tried that I would classify as steady state. There are no real intervals or sprints. You do have a few hill intervals where you get a walk break in the middle of the workout, but you are walking at an incline, so it is not much recovery.

She calls it an “up and down” or “fast and slow” workout. This basically means that you are alternating slower hills with faster flats. This allows your intensity to really remain fairly steady throughout the workout. The intensity does vary, because there are places where you are speeding up, but the variations in intensity are more subtle and towards the middle as opposed to hard/easy efforts. For this reason, I’m happy to own this workout. I will have to try some more 40 minute workouts to see if there are others with this format.

The music in this workout is not true Top 40, just iTrain’s “Top 40". I dind’t find the music in this one any better than other workouts. I liked some songs, and was lukewarm on others, which seems to be the case for many of these workouts