Treadmill - adjust distance bug or useless feature

jjorgemoura

Today I did a 1h10m run in a treadmill. The difference in distance tracked between the treadmill and the watch was “huge”. Watch tracked around 8Km and something while treadmill said ±11.9Km. From my time and treadmill data (and my effort), I think treadmill is right (around 5m53 per Km).

So, after finished the workout and having realised about the significant difference, I’ve corrected the distance on the watch. Did work correctly.

The problem, or better the bug, is that it only updated the workout distance, not adjusting the lap times (1Km intervals). Thus, in the SA, on Strava and other integrations, I’m seeing ten 1Km lap times of around 7m23 instead of around 5m53.

If this is not a bug, it means that the editing the distance in a treadmill feature is totally useless because makes the data totally inconsistent.

Egika

I don’t have access to a treadmill, but my understanding was, that it is a calibration for future runs.
If you run again after adjusting, is the huge difference gone?
Thx!

jjorgemoura

@Egika Maybe. Will keep an eye on it

Now that you mentioned it, actually, I had also manually adjusted the previous workout before this one. If I remember correctly, the difference was smaller than this time (± 2Km). So previous adjustment actually made the difference getting worse!

I understand that this is difficult to get it right because depends a lot on cadence, air time, gradient %, running form (more or less tired less) of the runner that particular day. Nevertheless, I would have expected this to have been tuned after all these years. A treadmill workout is not a niche activity that only recently appeared.

Hari Seldon

@jjorgemoura said in Treadmill - adjust distance bug or useless feature:

not adjusting the lap times (1Km intervals)

How do you think to adjust it afterwords if you have no idea what the correct speed etc was at that moment?

Ketoohs

@jjorgemoura Sunnto re calibrates its algorithm every time you run on a Treadmill and manually correct the distance. So the next time if you run at the same pace, the speed on the watch should be close to the speed on the Treadmill.

The problem is, that if you pick up the pace, there is no noticeable difference in speed on the watch, or if you run the entire workout with a faster or slower speed then the previous workout. Then the speed on the watch is off again. Then you correct it again and the algorithm is updated… And the whole story begins again…

As for the lap times, i don’t think there is an easy way to do this. It could take the difference that was recorded and then manually entered and calculate the %. Then correct the lap times accordingly. But I presume that would not be to helpful as the watch by my experience does not pick up larger shifts in speed OK.

pilleus

@jjorgemoura

It was never fun to use a Suunto watch on a treadmill. I think this will never change.

Years ago I bought a Runn treadmill sensor and all is fine. Because ascent cannot be tracked by the sensor, I took an old raspberry pi and two sensors to measure incline/ascent and steps (the Suunto is mounted on the treadmill). Recording as a run (not treadmill) I can add total ascent and steps to the activity in SA and add treadmill as a tag.

Just my solution…

Ketoohs

I did a run yesterday on the treadmill
2km@5:21
2km@4:25
0.4km@7:30
1km@4:08
0.4km@10:00
1km@4:08
0.4km@10:00
1km@5:21

All of it was done on 1% climb and I have a Norditrack commercial 1750 (not that it matters)

Here is how suunto recorded the pace:

As you can se only the first and the last interval are near the pace (as the last run was in that neighborhood), everything else is way off.

Gunnar

@Ketoohs said in Treadmill - adjust distance bug or useless feature:

As you can se only the first and the last interval are near the pace (as the last run was in that neighborhood), everything else is way off.

And you know why?