@dreamer_
My experiences with treadmills have been poor in the past and generally I’d prefer a footpod. Back before the pandemic in 2020, I’d often do indoor running at university gym and at that time I only had an Apple Watch, which can estimate pace/distance decently when you do sufficient outdoor running to calibrate it. For example, if I ran an indoor 400m track five times, I’d expect 2000m and I’d get something like 2012m, and that often would be explained by lane switches during the session. Meanwhile, a similar run on a university treadmill would always give me something like 2000m on the watch and 2600-2800m on the treadmill, just vastly giving me too optimistic results.
I’m also very familiar with certain paces, so if I wanted to do a steady state effort at 5:00/km for example, setting the tread for 12kmh (which is another problem, most use “speed” rather than “pace,” and for outdoors running, one typically uses pace) would give a result on my watch that I’d be doing closer to 4:00-4:15/km pace, and internally, I knew I was faster than the 5:00/km pace I wanted. These kind of results are often the case when I bother to use a treadmill in a hotel gym when I travel. Most just give faster results that I don’t trust.
I also have a sort of philosophical problem with how treadmills give data. Imagine a treadmill is moving at a decent speed, and I put my hands on the arm rails, and use my arms to muscle up and my feet dangle in the air, no longer running and not connected to the treadmill belt. The tread is still in motion and still marking pace and distance. I could even position myself to just get off the treadmill and let it run, gathering “free” distance if I wished.
Now, it’s not that I think people are “cheating” the results of treads, but the example is to illustrate that what is being measured isn’t the runner as much as it is the treadmill. Meanwhile, with my indoor bike, if I stop pedaling the bike comes to a stop. On my rowing machine, if I stop my effort, again the flywheel comes to a stop. So it seems to me the equivalent for indoor running is “if my feet stop, metrics stop” which is where I see a footpod as being a better way to track.
However, that doesn’t help with the issue of elevation grade changes. One solution is to use a manual treadmill like a Woodway: https://www.woodway.com/manual-treadmills/ and now there’s no motor moving the belt, and these type of treads typically don’t have an adjustable incline. It would also solve an issue of needing a good electrical outlet in older homes that may not be wired for that; simply avoid the need for electricity.
Still, most people don’t have manual treadmills, and likely have more faith in their treadmill metrics than I do. Perhaps people who own treads in their home are better at keeping them calibrated, whereas the gyms I’ve been to do not do so. Also, if someone mostly runs on a tread and not outdoors, then it doesn’t matter if the metrics are correct as long as they are consistent, I suppose. So sure, I’d like to see sports watches get the data off of them by bluetooth FTMS. Let the user decide if the metrics are valid.
