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)

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.

I'm a Data Junkie

(graphic courtesy of the Garmin product website)
I am a data junkie and a geek. I love reviewing data and picking it apart. I love my electronic toys, too. Both of these together make me get into trouble when I start researching how to track a new obsession.

I started using Daily Mile to record my day's exercise (it posts it to Facebook for me, too) but I'd have to remember what the information was until I got home. I also discovered that I would have to wear the pedometer I typically wear at work, etc., to track any outside walking/running and (again) remember where it was when I started so I could do some math and separate my "try not to encourage swivel-chair spread" office meaders from my "going for a real exercise walk".

Okay - and I've already pointed out that I'm lazy..... See the problem?

I wanted a way to have one piece of equipment to wear that would automatically track both indoor and outdoor exercise in one place with as little "memory" required from me as possible.

Enter the gadgets. I began doing a ton of research (I love research because, well, it's a lot about data!) and decided I wanted a gps enabled device that would track heartrate and distance/route outside but that could also track foodsteps inside. I wanted it to upload electronically and not to have to type it in myself, too. Oh and, of course, I wanted to be able to review the data in detail. After research and reading a ton of reviews and opinions, balanced with cost, etc. I made a decision and ordered my new toy.

I bought a Garmin 305 Forerunner with heart rate monitor and foot pod. It's not the most "fashion-forward" of Garmin's line but it offers the most display flexibility and accessory options along with a docking cradle that seems more reliable than the sync mechanism of the other models. I get charts of the running pace, heart rate and cadence (for biking really) for each workout. It uploads via the cradle (which also charges it) and I can import it into Daily Mile as well, so it shows up on the sidebar of this blog and on Facebook.

Last night I got everything charged and got the watch set up with the data displayed that I wanted so I could use the Garmin today.

I did have a few false starts at the gym. I discovered the Garmin 305 is very determined to seek out satellites before it finally decides to give up and asks me if I'm indoors. Next time I'll start it seeking before I get on the treadmill.

I also found out that the foot pod was a bit ... persnickety... about connecting and orientation. It really wanted to be arranged centered on top of my foot and laying along it. I'd started out with it off to one side because my VFF shoes have a single velcro strap and not the shoelaces the pod is designed for. This caused a bunch of weird distance readings and I have a couple of "stops" in my data when I paused the treadmill and adjusted it until I found where it wanted to be.

Tomorrow will be better. The weather is supposed to be nice so maybe I'll slather myself with sunscreen, strap on the Garmin and a Camelbak and take a walk along the Sammamish River Trail and see what data that gives me.

Data! I has it!