Running on treadmill question

[Waldo]

I've been doing some timed treadmill runs. The treadmill itself will have time and distance; though were I go, they're all miscalibrated (one yesterday, said I was doing 20kph, and I was literally fast walking). Anyhow, I also use my Garmin GPS watch, on 'indoor mode', however, it seems to know how far I've run. How can that be, without using GPS?

 

I'm guessing it works it out from arm / body movement? However, how can it account for stride distance?

[Cyclone]

It uses your stride length to work it out.

 

I use mine on indoor mode when I'm in the gym and it always seems to underestimate compared to the machine.

 

If you haven't set a stride length yourself, then it might have worked it out from your outdoor runs, or it might be using a generic setting of 1m (or whatever they default to).

[Waldo]

If you haven't set a stride length yourself, then it might have worked it out from your outdoor runs, or it might be using a generic setting of 1m (or whatever they default to).

 

Thanks Cyclone. Yep that makes sense for it to calculate your average stride length based on previous outdoor runs. Probably a lot more accurate than what the treadmill things I'm doing.

 

Quite a few at PureGym in the city center are way off. Not sure if they're intentionally limiting them, of if they're faulty, but they seem to run really slow. Anyone else noticed that?