Indoor track or treadmill?

Ooooh! Unfortunately I don't have the option of an indoor track but that would totally be my choice!

And honestly, it's a moot point for me.  I can run outside 365 here.  I haven't put a foot on a treadmill all year.

I can do laps in my office.  1500 laps to a mile.

Yeah ... I like that option, do that.

First of all Kido, that avatar freaks me out when I see it.  Now that I got that off my chest....

No doubt about it, with a 4.5 laps = mile indoor track, I would take that option every single time.  The indoor track I can run on circles 2 basketball courts and takes 12 laps for a mile. 

Hated the indoor track back in high school, so treadmill all the way for me.

FWIW, to minimize the knee pains, change directions every 10 or so laps.

I saw this thread and thought, "Oh, I wonder what the answer is?"

Well, I can see this is hardly a settled matter...

But interesting nonetheless.

Whichever answer you prefer.  There is no right or wrong... unless you choose the track, then you're totally wrong.

Treadmill. All those turns are pretty bad - can lead to all kinds of hip problems, etc.  That's my experience.  If you choose track, I recommend doing the warm up/cool down on the mill.

Personally I have never seen the kinds of gains as when I started using the treadmill.  I'm faster now than 13 years ago and I'm 43 in about 10 days.  All thanks to the treadmill - softer surface and a $itch of a taskmaster!  No injuries from the cambered concrete sidewalks and track turns.  (I also run VERY hilly trails outside a lot.)

With that said I could not do a long run on the mill. The mill is for very specific workouts: hills - I can totally control the grade - no "finding" the right hill length and grade, threshold/tempo, and 5K speedwork 200/400/800/mile.  Love it!  Running for 2 or 3 hours LSD would NEVER happen on a mill for me!  I limit it to 1-1:15 hours.

Andi

Wow, 4.5 laps to a mile is great.   I have one place I can run 2.5 laps to a mile and I honestly don't even notice the turns.  At my workplace our track is 11 laps/mile.  That is weird and since it's suspended I can't run the inside lane, it makes me sick.

After visiting Vegas this August I would totally be looking for indoor running options.  Holy cats it's hot there!

Personally I'd pick a track (like that) over the treadmill, if those are the only two options.   But not for every run.

I used to run on an indoor track in bad weather.  All the lunch-time runners would be there when it snowed.  The track was 0.1 mile so we were packed pretty close together.  We were all young and reasonably fast.  It turned into a race.  If the weather didn't clear, we would all kill ourselves in a few days.

That's pretty much how I see it for everything you said. I did have some knee trouble show up when I was a kid (10?) by running in a tighter circled area. Then just what you say about the uses of a treadmill.