Filmed video: running through a real place
Kinomap, BitGym and iFIT offer routes filmed outdoors. The video plays at the pace of your run, as long as the app knows your speed: a connected treadmill, a sensor, or the device’s camera with BitGym. Without any of those, BitGym also lets you adjust playback speed with the remote.
The catalogs are large: Kinomap advertises over 40,000 video routes and BitGym over 340 destinations. On compatible equipment, Kinomap also adjusts the incline to the chosen route.
Sources: App Store — Kinomap ↗ · BitGym — Treadmill routes ↗
3D worlds: a game setting
In a 3D world, the scenery is built for the game. Your avatar moves on screen, with other runners or a pacer, and cues appear: distance left, gap, time to beat. Zwift offers shared worlds and online events; to know your speed, it needs a foot pod, a smartwatch, smart shoes or a compatible treadmill.
That’s also Runkyz’s approach, with three routes: a track through space, a desert of pyramids and a 400-meter loop around a lake. The game shows speed and incline targets that you copy onto the console: it works without a sensor, but doesn’t read the treadmill’s real speed.
Further reading: Zwift — Running on Zwift ↗
GPX tracks: running a recorded route again
A GPX file contains the track of a run, usually with the elevation and time of each point. Some apps turn it into a route: the terrain becomes a series of gradients to follow on the treadmill. It’s useful for preparing a race profile or revisiting a loop you know.
On the Strava website, you export from an activity page, in the “…” menu. Choose a run recorded outdoors: an activity without GPS data, such as a treadmill session, produces an empty or unreadable file.
In Runkyz, GPX import is part of the license. The game rebuilds the track and its terrain in a 3D setting, which is not a photographic copy of the place. If the file includes timestamps, the pacer can replay your run. PowerTread, on iPhone and iPad, also loads GPX files and sets the incline on FTMS-compatible treadmills.
Sources: Strava — How do I export my Strava data? ↗ · App Store — PowerTread ↗
What your treadmill can reproduce
A virtual route doesn’t change what the machine can do. A 15% grade on screen can’t be run on a treadmill capped at 10%, and a treadmill without decline can’t reproduce a descent.
Apps handle those gaps in different ways. Runkyz asks for your treadmill’s maximum speed and incline, caps its targets and can make up for a grade that’s too steep with speed. That compensation is an approximation: it doesn’t recreate the effort of a real climb.
Which virtual route should you choose?
Start from what you want out of the session, then check that the app can read your treadmill or offers a manual mode. Try the free version or trial before subscribing.
- To travel: filmed video, with a connected treadmill or a sensor the app recognizes.
- For game-style cues: a 3D world with an avatar and a pacer.
- To prepare a race: the GPX track of the course, with its terrain.
- With a treadmill that isn’t connected: an app that accepts a sensor, like Kinomap or BitGym, or offers a manual mode, like Runkyz.
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