Yesterday morning, when I woke up, the power was still out. The wind was blowing like crazy (which is what knocked the power out on Sunday evening), and I was expecting trees to start blowing onto our house. The last thing I wanted to do was go run in that wind, so I decided to run on the treadmill.
Yep, I guess I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, because I thought, "Oh, I can't run on the treadmill, because I won't be able to watch TV or anything to keep my mind occupied!"--because the power was out. Then I had the idea to listen to my iPod, and just stare at the wall while running. I was only planning to run three miles, so it couldn't be too bad.
[No, it still hadn't occurred to me that the treadmill itself uses electricity...]
I got completely ready to run on the treadmill, turned on a podcast to listen to, and looked forward to the "adventure" of running on the 'mill without watching TV. When I turned on the treadmill, nothing happened. It was only THEN that I thought, "Duh! I can't use the treadmill, because we have no electricity!" And here I thought I was getting creative by using my iPod instead of a TV show, hahaha.
The power came back on at around 3:00 in the afternoon, so I ran on the treadmill then. I was excited to see how my new Garmin would do as far as accuracy. There is no foot pod; the distance is measured with the accelerometer in the heart rate monitor. I decided to do three miles at three different speeds, just to see what would happen.
For the first mile, I set the treadmill at 6.5 mph, which is a 9:14/mi pace. The Garmin showed that I ran that mile in 9:30; that was a pretty big difference, but I figured that it took at least 5-10 seconds for the treadmill to get to that speed.
For the second mile, I bumped the speed up to 7.0, which is an 8:34/mi pace. I definitely felt like I was running at that pace; my heart rate went up, my breathing was harder, and I was sweating like expected. But the Garmin showed that I finished in 9:20. That's a HUGE discrepancy! I know I was running much faster than 9:20, just based on my heart rate alone.
For the third mile, I lowered the speed to 6.0, which is a 10:00/mi pace. My heart rate lowered a lot, I felt like it was very easy, and just how I expected a 10:00/mi pace to feel. According to the Garmin, I completed that mile in 9:44.
Incline shows 0, but it was at 1% while running
The treadmill showed that I ran 3.11 miles in 28:48, which is a 9:16/mi pace. The Garmin showed 3.00 miles in 28:34, which is a 9:31/mi pace. I started my Garmin about 10 seconds after the treadmill, so obviously the timer on the treadmill is slightly off (which I knew already).
I'm disappointed that the Garmin was so off with the pace! I know the treadmill isn't perfect, but the Garmin definitely should have shown a bigger distinction between each mile. My pace graph usually goes parallel with my heart rate; the faster I run, the higher my heart rate is. But that wasn't the case on the treadmill. My heart rate reflected the faster pace, but the Garmin barely registered it.
All of the other stats (vertical oscillation, ground contact time, stride length) were right on with what they have been outside. So, I'm not really sure what to make of this yet. It was only a three mile run, and the first time I'd used the new Garmin on the treadmill, so I'm going to experiment some more with it. Maybe I'll wear both Garmins on a run (the 910 with the foot pod, and the 620) just to compare.
If it continues to be inaccurate, I'll just have to pair my foot pod with the 620; but that would be a bummer, because I was excited to ditch the foot pod!
I took a rest day today. I'd like to switch my rest days to Tuesdays, because my weigh-in/the start of my new Weight Watchers week is on Wednesday. When I have a rest day on Wednesday, I don't have any activity PointsPlus to start off my week, which is tough. So if I make Tuesday a rest day, I can plan to use up the rest of my weekly PointsPlus before my weigh-in the next day.
Speaking of which, I've stayed on track all week long, so I'm actually looking forward to weighing in tomorrow :)