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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!  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?

  • Let me just add to this. I ran on the treadmill after 600 miles tracked using GPS on the 945. The distance was close, but I fell for it and calibrated after the first treadmill run. Today I did a second treadmill run and the watch was off by almost double the distance and, thus, twice the pace! Wow, ridiculous! Please tell me this will be fixed soon! Winter has arrived and I want to be able to track HR data on my 945 with reasonable distance and pace accuracy. It does not need to be perfect, just not off by a factor of 2X.

  • Mine is almost exact. Mind you I’m using a Garmin foot pod with the 945. 

  • JohnTheRunner-can you calibrate a treadmill run, with a foot pod at the end of the run? I used my foot pod a few weeks ago, it was off a little, but it wouldnt let me calibrate before a save. I know I can adjust stride length, but for me that differs on what kind of run I am doing (i.e. tempo, speed or long slow distance). Thanks! 

  • Count me among those for whom 3.30 did not fix this issue. I see a new beta showed up just now (3.77 I think). I hope the next production release will actually fix this. I guess it is back to the Stryd footpad for now. 

  • There are additional improvements/fixes in the 3.77 beta that we hope resolve what was left for some users after 3.30. There were two different causes that resulted in very similar symptoms which is why 3.30 left some folks with incorrect treadmill data. 

  • Hi Garmin-Blake, will there be a fix for fenix 5x as well? Thanks.

  • Just added my name to the list of the frustrated. 

  • Is there any idea when 3.77 would be released to the public? 3.30 did improve my treadmill reading but it’s still not fixed.  Before I was “running” a 30-40 minute mile (I walk faster than that by a long shot).  Now it ranges wildly from 12 minute mile to a 30 minute mile.  I hate that my Vivoactive is far more accurate and cost less but I really want the better training features.  Hoping this is a resolved by the time I need to start training for my half marathon as some of it will need to be done on the treadmill (thanks winter). 

  • My garmin 5 x worked perfectly up to about 3 months ago - the calibration of the watch was perfect - minor adjustments initially but other than that it was spot on. It now measures 0.5 of the distance run.... and yes i have run outside with the gps.... and yes i have done a full factory reset.... now 3 months later no update (fix) from Garmin .... maybe its time for the bin and to just go and buy a Tag .... seriously disappointed in the product and service