If you are running up a hill in the real world, it’s harder than running on a flat surface because you need to do all the work required to lift your body mass vertically. The work is based on the force (your weight) times the distance travelled (the vertical distance).
But if you are on a treadmill, no matter what “incline” setting you put it at, your body mass isn’t going anywhere. I don’t see how there’s any more work being done than just running normally on a treadmill. Is running at a 3% incline on a treadmill calorically equivalent to running up a 3% hill?
In: Engineering
It’s not the work required to achieve a higher potential energy, it’s more that you’re running in a different direction than gravity. It doesn’t matter if the ground moves at a constant speed in either direction.
It might be more intuitive to understand, if you compare it to climbing stairs of an escalator, it is similarly exhausting, for an escalator that is going up, or down, or is standing still.
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