Foot pod on treadmill

TH3 FRB

Who has used a foot pod witht heir Garmin on the treadmill for pace?  I damn near ran myself into the ground today trying to do mile repeats on the treadmill - it HAS to be out of calibration.  This is a treadmill at work so I don't have the option of having it calibrated.

Kevin Walter

I use mine quite a bit to help follow my cadence. It is pretty reliable, within about 0:15/mile or so of what my treadmill is reading. I would calibrate your foot pod outside with the 800m GPS test and then use its numbers if the treadmill seems way off.

TH3 FRB

I've only ever used my foot pod to log cadence so I'll need to calibrate it. Just curious if anyone knows how the dynamics of a treadmill might impact the accuracy of the foot pod. Wish I had a way to figure out the true speed of the treadmill - maybe I can borrow a measuring wheel from someone.

mgraffeo

Joel, if you know the belt length of the treadmill, there's a way to check the calibration of it. I made up an excel a few years ago, I'll have to dig it up, and will try to get a google excel link put together for you.

once it's calibrated to outside, the inside measurements are pretty close, unless you change your form a lot. I've used my foot pod extensively, and it's been pretty reliable.

MattAaronson

You should be able to measure the true speed of the mill without a wheel if you
(a) know the exact length of the belt...either in the spec literature of the mill or you need to know the length between the drums and the drum diameter
(b) have someone count belt revolutions while you run at a particular speed

The real question is: if your footpod is calibrated outdoors (easy enough to do...just make sure you do it at your typical training pace), is that calibration valid on a treadmill? FOr me, the answer is "no", because on a mill I somehow manage to run quite differently. Maybe it is the stnadard 1.5 incline, or maybe it is the fact I run at 93-95spm instead of 86-89spm on average. But whatever it is, there is a difference.

TH3 FRB

That's what I was curious about.

Shouldn't be hard to measure the belt and count revs - how long should I count for...60sec?

Tom Glynn

I would calibrate outside at a track as recommended in the manual and then run on several treadmills to get an idea of how accurate each of the treadmills are in relation to each other and the Garmin. I find the very expensive, heavy machines at the gym are very, very close to my calibrated Garmin. My home treadmill, while good, seems to be off about 20 seconds per mile at my comfortable speed as compared to my watch. I just speed up, assuming the watch is accurate, not the treadmill.

I like the idea of testing the treadmill though!

tom

Matt Samojeden

Joel, most treadmills have a calibration procedure that can be run on them by hitting the correct buttons in a sequence on the treadmill. Do a Google on your model and calibration and see what you find. Minus that, the measure and count revolutions will tell you where it stands.



I use a foot pod for all treadmill runs. They are more accurate than a GPS when calibrated properly - ie use a track or a known measured distance - use a GPS distance as a last resort. The only issue I have with the foot pod is it is sensitive to movement in position on the shoe.



Chek out  DC rainmaker site and look for his posts on GPS accuracy and on foot pod accuracy. I tried to copy in the links but they would not go in correctly???

 http://www.dcrainmaker.com

Tom Glynn

here is the DC Rainmaker link noted above. Very impressive reading as always! He links to a calibration tool that I'm going to try. It looks very cool.

http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2011/01/garmin-ant-foot-pods-everything-you.html

I also figured out how to calibrate my treadmill - thanks for the tips!

tom

timdawg7

I just got my foot pod today. Most of my running over the next few months will be on a treadmill in Afghanistan. This thread is a great resource. Thanks.

Tom Glynn

I've just been playing with the calibration software recommended in the DC Rainmaker article. It looks at TCX files and compares the GPS data to the foot pod data. The straighter the course, the more accurate the GPS, so I pulled up a couple of out and back long runs that are pretty darn straight. You can only analyze one run at a time and some suggested calibrations were 1000, 994, 890. Not sure what to do with the information!

Trent Prough

You'll just plain go nuts trying to calibrate to a treadmill from outside running. I've ran on the cheapest and most expensive mills on the market and none are the same as outside running. I think since you could calibrate to a given pace, lets say 7:00 miles in your sweet spot running. Then when you do z4 intervals its off or when your running easy pace at 8:00 miles its off. I don't think it can get it right when we do as much interval or different paced running throughout workouts. If you ran your sweet spot running pace that you calibrate at then maybe it would be pretty accurate, but otherwise forget it.

I would see what the paces show you run on the treadmill you train on and base paces off that. In other words you get a treadmill Vdot when training on the treadmill. Yes this means testing on the mill. (which is painfully mentally tough)

Joseph Lombardi

Who used the footpod now/!

Quesiton: I just got a foot pod...I didn't have a chance to calibrate it...so out of the box...on the shoe...on the TM....The distance was acccurate but the pace was off (Pod had me running faster pace than the mill showed)...thoughts on this...if it is measuring distance properly is the pace correct?

Carl

I use a metronome that fits in my ear. Set it to 95-100!! Works great for me.

Joseph Lombardi

 hmm...ya know I have the Wetronome from Finis for swimming...they say it works for running too...I might try it ..thanks.

William Crawford

I use a foot pod with either a Garmin or Suunto watch. I have used it in races to confirm it is accurate, and it has always been on the mark. I have used it for several years and do not recall what, if anything, I had to do to calibrate it. The readings are always different from the treadmill. I have come to trust the foot pod. My treadmill at home is consistently 40 seconds slower. Some treadmills at the gym are very close and others are way off. If the distance is correct, the pace should be as well.

William Jenks

I should go back and read the DCR post, but just a few thoughts on footpods and calibration:

- as has been pointed out, GPS is most accurate with fewer turns and longer straights. If you doubt this, try running a few miles on a standard 400 m track. :-)

- Now just speaking from my experience.... Footpod calibration can be pretty darn accurate, but if you want it to be that accurate, you need to to take care of a few things. Among them: (a) calibrate at or near the pace you want measured most accurately; (b) Put the thing on your shoe in a reproducible place, not just anywhere; (c) don't expect land calibration to be correct for treadmills, since your stride is just that much different...sort of like calibrating at a much different speed.

I know this latter thing doesn't help unless you calibrate your treadmill separately, but others have given direction on that. :-)

Finally, I should comment that I now "manually" calibrate my Garmin. The ~1000 scale is a linear adjustment. I run a mile on a track and read how long the Garmin says I've gone. I then adjust the calibration to compensate. If it says I've gone 1.04 miles, I lower the calibration by 4%. I can make that adjustment while jogging during recovery time. Next mile, repeat. Usually after two miles, it's very accurate. I do this only with new shoes, if I had to reset the thing for some reason, first of the season, etc. Doesn't have to be done frequently.

But remember, you can have as many calibration numbers as you like, as long as you're willing to go in and edit it. You can have an outdoor/track number and a treadmill number, for example.

So far our weather has been good outside for early winter, and I've been running on a track during one of my kids' soccer practice. I turn the GPS off for these workouts.

benvanmarcke

I'm getting my treadmill end next week, and the last few weeks I've been running on the gym treadmill with a footpod. Interestingly I drove across the country a few weeks ago which also allowed me to test several hotel treadmills and pace seems to be quite different between the different treadmills! I calibrated my footpod on a Life Fitness treadmill, but when running on others, some seem to run faster and some seem to run slower. I'm thinking about doing the following:

- I plan to do my weekend running outdoors as much as possible. I did the Vdot test last week, so I have data. It was done using GPS, no footpod, so I will continue running outdoors without the footpod.
- When my new treadmill arrives I'll do a 5km vdot test on it also (2% incline). I will then recalibrate my footpod at my threshold pace. Continue doing all indoor runs with the footpod.

SHould be accurate, no?

Al Truscott

@ Ben ... It's not clear where you intend to calibrate your footpod. If you calibrate it outside on a track or other flat course of known length, at the spped at which you expect to do your intervals, then you will have a good calibration to move forward from, able to use it on all treadmills.

Then, when you go onto your treadmill, you will know what setting to put it at to produce your interval paces. That is, adjust the treadmill speed so that you are running at your interval pace as indicated by your footpod/pace watch.

See this blog post from DC Rainmaker on footpd calibration for other ideas.

 

benvanmarcke

I calibrated it first on a treadmill when I just got the footpod (I believe somewhere in western Colorado) on the hotel gym treadmill. Then I ran with it on other treadmills in other hotels, and sometimes they appeared to be faster, sometimes slower.

My thought was to recalibrate it on my new treadmill I'll get in my own house but it sounds like that may be inaccurate and overly complicated. So I'll recalibrate it outside, at maybe Z3 pace using GPS.

Thank!