Garmin Foot Pod Placement

I've been doing well with using my Garmin to track my walking but indoors I need to use the Garmin's Foot Pod to track walking on the treadmill because, well, you are walking but not going anywhere!

The Garmin Foot Pod is actually a small accelerometer you are supposed to attach to the laces of your shoes so it lays along the top of your foot. Well, this would be great if I wore shoes with laces....

Since I wear my VFF Komodo Sport shoes to walk in, I don't have laces. I have one velcro strap across the top of my foot and I initially put the Foot Pod on that strap. While it worked, it had some issues with both flopping around a bit and messing up my readings and with having to be taken off and put on again if I switched shoes to wash a pair (great plus of the VFF) or if I was outside for a walk and didn't need the Foot Pod.

When I walked on different treadmills at my gym and looked at several weeks of data comparisons between the Garmin and the treadmill readouts, the Garmin Foot Pod seems to be about .2 mph faster than the treadmill readout. Not enough that I'm willing to go through the hassle of calibrating it.

But after one day where I was somehow getting a blister on one foot and took off my VFFs to walk barefoot on the treadmill, I decided I needed to figure out how to wear the Foot Pod to get reasonable accuracy but be shoe-independent.

So, like any self-respecting geek, I googled around for other people's solutions. There were a lot of people "guessing" that it wouldn't work except if you made a sorta shoelace foot net to put it on - but I did find a few people who said they had tried or were going to try an ankle strap. Most of these were using hair ties or rubber sports bracelets but I saw someone refer to the ankle RoadID.

BINGO - I have two of these (I bought a spare).

Over the last week, I've experimented with the Garmin Foot Pod on the ankle RoadID. I have the Foot Pod on the neoprene strap and the reflective thinner strap wraps over it to keep it secure and reduce extra movement.

The most comfortable position with the least movement seems to be with the Foot Pod on the back of my ankle with the narrow end down (the end that would normally point toward your toes). Using this placement, I looked at some more sets of data and I'm getting about the same error factor as I do with the Foot Pod on top of my foot. So I'll call this a GO.

(Note: I'm using the 2nd generation Foot Pod but have ordered the newer 3rd generation one to try this also)

Small Signs of Progress: Heartrate Changes

Since I gave myself shin-splints a few weeks ago, I've been limiting myself to walking daily. No running. I worried for a while that I would feel like I was stuck because I wasn't progressing to running but I think that was a false concern.

I've been able to walk faster from week to week and I've settled for walking for an hour, most days (a few days I've been the butt of Mother Nature's joke on females and just couldn't go far or fast - but I still went). I started out with under three miles in an hour, now I'm up to over 3.1.

I've also been paying attention to my heartrate and using it to help judge how fast I should be walking. I like my heartrate to be in the 120s during the bulk of my walk. When I first started out, 2.8 mph would have my heartrate in the high 120s easily. And if I slowed down, my heartrate would take several minutes to slow to the 110s.

Today I noticed that walking at 3.4 mph had my heartrate in the low to mid-120s and when I slowed down, it took under a minute for my heartrate to drop.

That's progress that may not show on a scale or as running, but my body is slowly adjusting and getting healthier.!

Don't Rely on Treadmill Calibration!

I've already confessed to being both a geek and a data junkie, so this post may not come as a surprise to any of the (no) people reading this blog. Once I had my new Garmin in hand and started using it, I started to see interesting discrepancies between what the treadmill's display was telling me and what the Garmin was telling me.

Now, I would expect that if it were a problem with the Garmin or its footpod, I'd see the same or very similar discrepancies all the time. But that's not what I'm seeing.

A few days ago, I used the third treadmill from the end at my gym and noticed that 3mph seemed exceptionally slow. After a bit, I glanced at the Garmin and it said that I was really walking at 2.8mph. hmmm.

Today I used the fifth treadmill from the end to see what happened. The treadmill's stated speed agreed with the Garmin's reading so it was probably reasonably close. But the problem came in mileage....

I walked for 2 min at 2.5 mph (a warm-up and a cool-down minute)
Then I walked for 58 minutes at a 3.0 OR GREATER speed. I was watching my HR monitor and would go between 3.0 and 3.2, depending on what my HR was doing, mostly 3.1-3.2.

At the end of the hour total time, the treadmill told me I had walked a total of 2.75 miles.

Ummm.... that math does NOT work at all.

58/60 = .97 (the portion of an hour actually walked in full-on mode)
.97 * 3mph = 2.9 miles (minimum distance because I'd actually spent most of it at 3.1 to 3.2 mph).
1.0-.97 = .03 (the portion spent in warm-up/cool-down mode)
.03*2.5mph = .075 miles (distance walked in warm-up/cool-down)
2.9+.075 = 2.975 miles

2.975 is the MINIMUM I walked. This is a difference of almost a quarter mile from what the treadmill told me. The difference is greater if I take 3.1 mph as an average and do the same calculation.

Seriously - walking 2 minutes short of an hour at a 3mph pace should give me just shourt of 3 miles, no? Not 2.75.....

So, in light of all the variances, I'm going to stick with the Garmin's variances since they should be consistent over time. I think my best bet is to walk for an hour and just see how far I go, since I know I can walk 5K in an hour at a very doable pace.

So - this is my data geek warning to never take what the display on any exercise machine tells you as the truth. Calibration (or lack thereof) can play havoc with the stated values.

Nurturing Confidence

I'm still a long way from many of my goals, including weight loss and fitness goals, but I can already see some changes in myself. This time the changes are more in attitude and emotions than in the physical. It's a bit strange because I've been so focused on the physical but those actually aren't the first changes I notice.

In most of my life I'm a pretty confident person and, when I'm not sure, I usually will take the risk anyway. True, it does take some talking myself into it sometimes, but I often will make the leap. This has definitely shown in my work life.

But there are parts of my life where I'm really not confident and many of these revolve around either how I look or what I can physically do. I was always comparing myself to others and feeling negative about how I looked but because I had no confidence in my physical abilities, I thought I was trapped in the skin I'm in. No, I'm not sure why I thought that - because it's obvious I can make changes (and have). Maybe it's a symptom of feeling if I don't try and I'm negatively judged, I have an excuse for why?

I'm truly not sure.

What I have noticed is that I'm seeing less of these negative comparisons in myself and when I do compare myself to another person and find something lacking, I start thinking about how to get there (if possible) or how it's just the breaks that I won't ever have x attribute. I just don't seem to linger on it past a thought or two.

When something is physically hard, I seem more able to acknowledge it's hard and put aside my almost obsessive need to WIN the first time and recognize that it may take time to get there but I can do it if I both want to do it and I put the necessary work for into it. It's okay to not have things happen overnight. It's okay to have to build up to something.

Hell, it's okay not to be Wonder Woman!

Instead I'm trying to nurture this little seed of confidence in my ability to achieve my long-term goals on this fitness journey. One pound at a time. One step at a time. One new experience at a time.

Today's Walk - Sammamish River Trail (WA)

Today, despite it being my allowed "day off" of exercise, I decided I wanted to take advantage of the nice weather and walk along the Sammamish River Trail. I live in Western Washington state and we're very lucky in the number of trails, paths, parks, etc we have. Many of these are multi-use trails where bikers, walkers, runners, skaters, etc. all share the trail. For the most part, this works really well and the vast majority of people follow the basic rules and are nice to each other.

The Sammamish River Trail is 10.9 miles in full, all paved. I love the river and all the plant, insect and wildlife I get to see. In fact, I meander along it with my camera quite a bit. Today was obviously Canada Goose day as a lot of them were bobbing in the river, looking for snacks.

I enjoyed my walk and put a link to the map generated by my Garmin Forerunner during the walk at the top of this post. See - DATA!

I slathered on a lot of sunscreen, filled the smaller Camelbak with water, brought my good sunglasses and set off in my VFF.

Things I'll do differently next time:

• Burp the Camelbak. The sloshing was a bit annoying.
• Put ice in the Camelbak (we don't use much ice at my house so rarely have any - might have to stop somewhere). The water got pretty warm after a bit.
• Take chapstick. The sunscreen did well on most of my skin but my lips suffered a bit.
• Go earlier in the day. It gets a bit crowded at noonish on a weekend.
• Remember my iPod.

What a lovely day for a walk.

Oh - and I realized I got 5K done in under an hour. Woohoo!