Using a Garmin on the treadmill - Gear

Emrun

13/06/2011 at 17:47

I have a Garmin F60 (non GPS) watch with a foot pod. I generally run outside but have been adding more speed sessions on the treadmill recently. I was wondering if the pace is still accurate on the watch as the treadmill pace was 10kph which as far as I know equates to 10 min miles however my watch recorded me running at 9:25 min miles. Who do I believe?!

Thanks,

Emily

mathschick

13/06/2011 at 19:16

maybe somewhere inbetween? I think treadmills can be pretty inaccurate as the belt come loosen etc. I remember a few years ago my gym got new treadmills and I was shocked that the pace that I thought I normally ran at comfortably on the old treadmill was incredibly hard for me to maintain on the new one!

ross riley

13/06/2011 at 19:36

You have to calibrate the foot pod for it to work properly, and this is best on a track where you have a precisely measured distance. Once it's been calibrated it is fairly accurate, +/- .5%.

The other thing of course is that treadmills are notoriously inaccurate, the only way to be sure that the one you are using is accurate is to measure the length of the belt and count the revolutions up to 800m or so.

That should give you the data you need to produce fairly accurate measurements.

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