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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 mccullochd

    I have a forerunner 945 

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    I have the Venu and it is the same problem and most of my exercise is the treadmill - would be nice if they fix the problem, my earlier Garmin treadmill accuracy was very close to accurate

  • 0 over 4 years ago in reply to mccullochd

    very much still an issue. DAILY. 

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    Not taking anything away from how messed up the treadmill calibration function can be (and should be better) we did finally buy the NPE Runn device to mount on our old treadmill and provide direct pace/speed/distance to our watches.  It provides really good clean data (and clearly showed how off the speed settings on our treadmill are, especially with different people/weight). Being Bluetooth and ant+ it does all sorts of stuff with Strava and so forth but we do not use these features.  Hardware and setup is easy, however the software side of things are not the best (don't really need much of their software).  It is nice to do interval work and see, in GC, nice clean pace graphs!

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    I have the opposite issue on the 245. It records about 1/10 of the distance when on a treadmill.

  • 0 over 4 years ago

    So, a year later I can come back to this topic that I started, to round things up:

    As far as treadmill calibration it self goes, to my experience Garmin has fixed it almost perfectly now. If I do somewhat consistent treadmill running over a period of time, and calibrate after every run, the watch will end up reporting almost exactly the same distance as the treadmill - sweet!

    BUT..!

    That is only true as long as I ONLY do indoor running on Treadmill. Every outdoor run will mess things up, and pull in another direction, much less now than earlier, but still enough to make the calibration not work as intended. I guess there is some explanation to why outdoor running metrics is used to calibrate treadmill run, but I would very much prefer if outdoor running was considered a completely different sport than treadmill running! Then maybe we could also have different shoes automatically assigned to outdoor versus treadmill running - I mean, who uses the same shoes for those two?

  • 0 over 3 years ago

    You set your watch for indoor treadmill run, start your run and your watch and run a mile. When you're done press the top button or the stop and it'll give you a choice between dismissing or calibrating. The thing is you have to run the mile in the mile has to be seen on your watch. Then you just put in with the treadmill says. I'm heading within one or two now. 4 miles sometimes I get 98 or 99. Before I was going way over

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to 8108371

    Yes, but as soon as you log an outdoor run with the watch, treadmill calibration is messed up because it uses outdoor metrics to calculate treadmill stride/distance. I would very much prefer that treadmill and outdoor running were considered different sport all together. Then maybe you could have different shoes set as standard allso.

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to 8702454

    How do you calibrate the VA4? I don't even seem to have the option. As soon as I finish, the only options that I have are to save or delete

  • 0 over 3 years ago in reply to DLM78

    Try this, after you're done with your walk or run on a treadmill go into the app where it shows up on the connect. Press the activity then press the hamburger at the top right of the screen and choose edit. Then put in the distance that you actually went on the treadmill. Then back out and sink. The other ways just wait until your watch shows 1 mile and press the A Button. Sometimes it will ask you to dismiss or calibrate. I don't know what makes this come up sometimes it does sometimes it doesn't. Like hit or miss