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Treadmill distance way off, calibration making things even worse.

So, of course, you can never know if a treadmill is counting the distance perfectly. But the ones I've been using for years have reported distances consistantly, and on par with my outdoor running distance/time. And my FR 235 did a good job estimating Treadmill distance, consistently reporting around 0,95 km per 1 km on the teadmill.

The FR 945 is a completely different story. It started of recording about 1,4 km per 1 km on the treadmill on my standard 5 km @ 4:30 min/km. Using the Calibrate after saving function doesn't make things any better, actually they are getting worse! Today (fw 2.80 on the watch) every 1 km on the treadmill was more than 2 km on the watch, resulting in a world record over 10k at 21:19 min - WOHOOO!

As I understand the concept of calibrating, the watch should take the distance I put in when calibrating, and use it together with the number of steps measured for the same workout to get a new stride length for better treadmill distance calculation in the future? Or does the calibration feature only edit the distance for that specific run?

The only setting that I've found that could mess things up is the optional manual stride length for walking in Garmin connect app, but I have that one of, and it shouldnt be relevant for tredmill running nayway?

This problem seems widesperad on the FR245, is it equally bad for everyone on FR 945?

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0 5701726 over 4 years ago in reply to Simone.01

Maybe it’s just me but I’d be happy to simply have the end of every treadmill run prompt me to adjust the distance and then have the software back into the metrics. Would this not be simpler then trying to get the watch to do something for which it probably wasn’t truly designed?

0 Zenginerd over 4 years ago in reply to 5701726

Which is basically what I do after every treadmill run anyway.

Speed, cadence, stride length... (holding the treadmill handles while running) all of these will skew the results. "Calibrate" is almost meaningless.

0 Per_Folkesson over 4 years ago in reply to 5701726

I agree, but then again - if you use the calibration feature after every run that's pretty much the function you are asking for? We'll, you won't get the correct distances on the watch which is a shame. Would be neat if you could shoose to have it either way - automatic distance, with possibility to calibrate OR manual distance after every treadmill run.

0 Brandon over 4 years ago in reply to 5701726

I have thought the same thing. Let me enter the distance I ran and scale the data accordingly. It would be simple and more accurate.

0 Brandon over 4 years ago in reply to Per_Folkesson

When calibrating, the watch doesn't correct the errors in stride length, vertical ratio etc... If it scaled this data up or down to match the reported distance, that would be acceptable.

0 4649555 over 4 years ago

Just got a new Vivoactive 4 and the indoor running distance is way off but it seems to count steps correctly. Changing the stride length dosent seem to make any difference. Come on Garmin how difficult is it to multiply mu custom stride length by the number of steps to calculate my distance. Since i will be doing a bit of indoor walking during the winter I am considering returning the watch and look for another brand since this seems to be a common problem with many of their models.

0 micro over 4 years ago

I did treadmill run yesterday with the 945 and the distance was 30% lower compared to the treadmill's display. After the run the watch didn't offer me to calibrate. I remember a long time ago with a previous SW I was asked to calibrate but not now on 4.06 Beta. I rarely use the treadmill, usually run outside with GPS.

When should the watch ask for calibration?

0 BeneGi over 4 years ago in reply to micro

Don't know when the change happened, but is was long before 4.0

If you stop the activity, don't select "save" but scroll down to "save and calibrate". You have to run longer than 2km to see the option.

0 micro over 4 years ago in reply to BeneGi

Thanks, I will check next time.

0 Franklioni over 4 years ago in reply to Garmin-Blake

I've been told this was fixed with 14.20 upgrade but now on 15.10 and still woeful. I wish it was true but there is no way I've gone from a 48min 10km to 28min....