Correcting distance for treadmill run

macchiatto

My apologies if this is answered somewhere and I haven't found it yet.

My runs are a mix of outdoor and treadmill runs. (I have measured stride length and put in my average walk and run values.) I use treadmill mode on my Charge 2 to record these runs and I appreciate being able to see heart rate patterns, etc. However, the distance is always a little off, especially since my pace usually varies throughout the course of a run (e.g. this morning it logged 3.7 miles and treadmill said 3.9).

What I've done so far is to note start and stop time, then delete the "treadmill" entry on the app and manually enter it as a "run" with the correct distance, though I've noticed the step count then usually changes significantly from what the treadmill log shows. Does this matter? Should I be doing anything differently? Maybe just skip treadmill mode and manually enter it later (making sure I note exact start/stop time so the heart rate record will still be accurate)?

heybales

To keep people from cheating to get big steps on challenges - if you enter walking or running manually - it assumes the distance is correct that you give, divides by your stride length to get steps taken, and that becomes the replacement steps (which can't be used in challenge totals).

Better to create a Custom Activity called whatever you want (not walking or running), and now you can enter in the start & duration, distance, and calories if desired, or let it compute it based on this new pace.

I've not tested if it uses existing calorie burn based on HR (it shouldn't if you are entering in manual over-writing info), but shouldn't matter because by formula has better chance of accuracy anyway, if the distance and time is correct.

That way the steps are kept. You can even leave the original Activity Record with snapshot of the stats. Those stats were replaced in the daily total, but you can still see the snapshot.

Like this. Sometimes I'm shocked how close it gets the distance and calories to my better estimate when I've done Jog & Walk intervals the entire time

macchiatto

Interesting! I didn't realize some of that; thanks for taking the time to explain! So your "run stats pre-change" record, was that created automatically or did you track it on your Fitbit at the time and then create the second entry with the correct distance?

heybales

I have a Zip, so no ability to start a workout, so "run stats ..." was a manually created Activity Record for what the Garmin said was start & end time. That allowed the snapshot of the stats.
So that would be equal to other models starting an activity on the device, some allow selecting a specific type of workout, some are general. That's the one you could edit the name on, as well as start/end time, or add notes.

And indeed the one with "View Details" is my manually created Workout Record, but using my own custom workout rather than anything in the database.
Now the kicker to that - you have to have your own calorie burn since Fitbit can't look an entry up in the database.

But you can use the exact same calorie burn as Fitbit showed already, merely correct the distance.
That's the entry you can't edit either, merely delete and make another one if needed.

macchiatto

Got it. Thank you so much for your time!