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Treadmill distance way off, calibration making things even worse.

Per_Folkesson
over 5 years ago

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!  Disappointed

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?

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to Franklioni

    Mine is much better since the last update but only for run speeds that I normally do. If I do any speed work it shows that I’m running half that pace. 

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to aricjf

    That's likely because it's calibrated for a stride length at your usual aerobic running pace. When you go faster your stride length tends to get longer. If the cadence doesn't change then the pace will appear to be less. 

    So, no surprises there. If you want a more realistic pace for speed work, then you'll need a calibration for that.

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

    Mine was working fine until for some reason the distance switched to miles (not KM) and subsequently as I went to recalibrate without knowing made it worse....

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to titust1

    It’s a problem with the vivoactive 4s as well. I’ve been on several GPS runs and a few treadmill runs. I’ve calibrated the treadmill runs every time. The other day I did an interval workout on the treadmill- each .5 mile interval was at least 8:30 min/mi or faster but my data from my watch shows 9:30 min/mi or slower.

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

    Yet, mine is getting worse EVERY time I run on the treadmill. Of course that is often in the spring of 2020. You cannot edit the STRAVA data so every run needs to be deleted and manually uploaded to STRAVA. Given the number of challenges and events on STRAVA due to COVID-19 this is a frustrating garmin watch. Please advise asap.

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    it's all about your cadence and a previous known average stride length measured using GPS outdoors - you can then trick the watch by deliberately taking a short stride length/high cadence on the treadmill - it thinks you're still running at your average stride length, so the high cadence means supposedly covering a greater distance. using this technique you can deliberately "catch up" to the distance measured by the treadmill. the calibrate and save option is further down the menu than it was originally I believe, so it's not as obvious as it was (I think it should be the default option). And sure it may now save and apply the new average stride length for treadmill, but it's still a guess subject to the above manipulation

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to kelly.wavrin

    How many outdoor runs have you done with this Forerunner before calibrating on the treadmill? Are you running on the same treadmill each time? Would you be able to provide us with the Software Version installed on your device?

    I apologize for so many questions but we will need more information to help you out. 

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

    Also Former Member i'm curious why (frustrated by) the 945 allows calibration before save, but then still sends the uncalibrated totals & splits to stava... seems just dumb

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to DrumPhil

    Might be a good idea to ask Strava. My guess is that it's more Strava's inability to get the data from the file it receives.

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

    I’m writing this post 7 months on and seem to be still having the same issues. Has there been a software update to sort this out or is it still an issue?