Help With Treadmill Speed Calibration

Your garmin’s ‘indoor run’ pace will be off even more than the treadmill.....which (even if you recalibrate it)will change under load and decalibrate over time. Just get a Stryd.

I've come to basically ignore what speed the treadmill is displaying, and just train by Heart Rate on it, since I typically vary the elevation gain throughout the session, and the elevation conversion charts are not all that accurate, either. So I find training by Heart Rate is a more precise and useful metric rather than just the old-school Rate of Perceived Exertion.

A good HR monitor, along with experience, pretty much makes a pod device unnecessary.

I kind of just assume treadmill paces are inaccurate and only useful for comparing to that same treadmill. My roommates treadmill in the basement is at least 30 seconds a mile faster than planet fitness. Idk which is fast or slow, but does it really matter? Run by effort and ignore the numbers on the screen. Is anyone really doing specific pace training on a treadmill anyways? Possibly marathoners I guess now that I think about it.

Daniels Running Formula tells you how to check your treadmill speed. But it’s kind of common sense. When it is turned off, measure the length of the belt (that you run on). Use chalk to mark a line, and then when the treadmill is running at a “speed” you want to check, use a stopwatch to see how long it takes the belt to do 100 times around. Use simple math to see how far you would have run in those 100 revolutions, and compare it to the speed on the console.

This does not account for the tmill slowing down briefly when you land for each stride, but it’s a good approximation.

Dr Yuengling wrote:

Run by effort and ignore the numbers on the screen. Is anyone really doing specific pace training on a treadmill anyways? Possibly marathoners I guess now that I think about it.

I actually prefer doing some workouts on the treadmill, especially if the weather is crappy. And I've done my time in bad weather, so don't call me a wuss. Sometimes it's just nice to set it to the prescribed pace and zone out. Like today, I did a hill workout. Instead of taking the time to look for a hill, drive to it, etc. I just went downstairs to the treadmill.

txRUNNERgirl wrote:

Dr Yuengling wrote:

Run by effort and ignore the numbers on the screen. Is anyone really doing specific pace training on a treadmill anyways? Possibly marathoners I guess now that I think about it.

I actually prefer doing some workouts on the treadmill, especially if the weather is crappy. And I've done my time in bad weather, so don't call me a wuss. Sometimes it's just nice to set it to the prescribed pace and zone out. Like today, I did a hill workout. Instead of taking the time to look for a hill, drive to it, etc. I just went downstairs to the treadmill.

I would not call you a wuss because I do all my tempos/progressions on the treadmill. I just kinda feel like those workouts where the goal is aerobic fitness are easy to do by feel rather than pace. Versus say doing 10x400 on the track at mile pace.

Buncha jerkoff answers here. She asked a legitimate question: how do you calibrate a treadmill?

I don’t know the answer, but it’s a good question.

Pull the plug from the wall. Turn the potentiometer on circuit board 62. Retest it.

Here’s an easy way to measure the belt if you don’t have a flexible tape measure.

-Get a roll of tape. Be prepared to waste tape.

-stick tape to treadmill, turn treadmill on the slowest setting, or manually pull the belt.

-let tape stick to belt so it does 1 full rotation, sticking to the belt the entire way like one giant line of tape.

-take tape off of treadmill and lightly stick it to the floor.

You could also tape a piece of string to the belt, let it do a rotation, and take the string off. But string does stretch a little.

-measure tape/string with a tape measure in feet. That’s the length of one rotation of the belt.

-Now stick one tiny piece of tape to the belt, set it for your running speed, and count its revolutions for 1 minute. Set a timer on your phone so you can concentrate on counting. Be exact. Count a half rotation if that’s how it ends.

-Do the math. 5280 divided by the length of the belt then divided by the number of revolution in a minute. This will give you the actual pace you ran (minutes per mile).

So, for example, if you set it at 8:00 pace, have a 16ft belt, and counted 45 rotations in your minute, you’d do:

5280 / 16 = 330 / 45 = 7.33, which is really 7:20 pace.

There are other ways to arrange the math problem, but this keeps it simple.

Tachometer.

If the belt is slipping, that's another story. I'm sure there would be a way to fix that.

When you say off, is it slow or fast? Belt slipping?

I should add, that’s for knowing the true speed, not for calibration your specific model, obviously.

If the belt slips, then the speed under the load of you would be different than when unloaded (no one running on it). The correlation could vary with speed, but you could still easily make a calibration curve.

Rick Sanchez wrote:

When you say off, is it slow or fast? Belt slipping?

It's fast. The belt seems fine.

txRUNNERgirl wrote:

I have a NordicTrack Commercial X11i treadmill that I got from a friend a few months ago. Both my husband and I noticed the speed seems way off. We've both been runners for many, many years, so we have a good idea of what certain paces should feel like, even on a treadmill. I have tested it with my Garmin watch using indoor mode, and it's off around 30-45 seconds per mile. I know the watch can't be super accurate, but just using that as an example.

I've tried searching for instructions on how to fix this, but can't find anything relative to the model.

Although your treadmill belt may be going a certain speed, the speed that you are actually traveling varies from person to person based on your stride length.

Also, I still stand behind all of the research I've done that proves treadmill running is scientifically easier than road running because you actually have a motor that is propelling you each step. Your legs are being helped in a forward motion while on a treadmill, as compared to a road or grass where your body must do all of the work. Think of it like a mo-ped vs a bicycle.

It doesn't matter, because depending upon one's gait mechanics, besides the elevation setting, you are going to find out that a treadmill's speed (even when calibrated) is not going to produce the same effort as speed over ground.

You can ballpark the effort with the treadmill pace setting, but effort, as determined by Heart Rate, is the way to go when assessing the actual workout load, whether on a treadmill, or outside running up a hill in 10deg weather with stiff wind, bundled up in 3-layers of clothing.

Uh, how is your tmill making you go forward? My treadmill forces me backwards. Is yours opposite or something!

milkdoesthebodygood wrote:

Just get a Stryd.

+1