HRM Pro: Distance for timed activities

When you leave your watch on the bench and wear the band, are you recording an activity on the watch?  And which one?

When you stop/save the activity on the watch, the watch should download the data from the band.

Are you just downloading the data right to your phone?

One cannot download what is not recorded.

The strap on its own does not record distance covered is the issue.

I am recording an activity. I have tried some different one, for example the "Indoor Treadmill" one. The data syncs fine, I get HRM and Cadence graphs. But I want the cadence translated into distance, and preferably also speed.

Here is a snapshot from the activity:

Note that distance is 0.00 and the pace graph is constant but I do have cadence data and the other running dynamics data in there.

Had I worn an old-style footpod on an indoor threadmill it would have been able to use my account's stride length to fill out those two. Why doesn't it here?

Thank you for your response. While the strap does not record distance, it does record cadence. Garmin has been able to translate that into distance and pace for a long time (e.g. for footpods). Why are they not doing it here?

Garmin has been able to translate that into distance and pace for a long time (e.g. for footpods).

Footpods use much more than cadence to determine pace and distance.

Indeed they do. I guess that was an oversimplification, my bad.

Nonetheless. Garmin says the HRM Pro has support for the running dynamics measurements which includes stride lengths. Even if it does not have same kind of IMU/triaxxial accelorometer as a footpod (I have no idea if it does) you should be able to translate what you get from running dynamics into a decent estimate of distance I would think.

In fact my HRM Pro does not seem to output stride length into my Garmin Connect activity (it sits at 0 in the graphs I posted earlier). This seems to contradict the manual.

AFAIK the HRM-Pro (and any other garmin runninng dynamics sensor) calculates stride length by receiving current pace data from the watch. Therefore it won't work when the strap works disconnected from the watch.

I see. It's a shame GC just says "0" instead of "no data" then. I feel like this limitation of the offline data transfer of the HRM Pro is poorly communicated. I bought it with the expection that it would work. I can understand why it might not, thanks to you, but I am still disappointed.

From a technical standpoint I am not sure how the watch helps with stride length in the case of indoor workouts. If I actually wear the watch and go on a treadmill, does the swinging of my arm somehow help the determination of pace? I guess they must correlate the length of the arc my arm moves with my stride length somehow?

From a technical standpoint I am not sure how the watch helps with stride length in the case of indoor workouts. If I actually wear the watch and go on a treadmill, does the swinging of my arm somehow help the determination of pace?

Yes, all recent garmin watches can calculate pace for indoor workouts, albeit with limited accuracy.