If you want a very reliable footpod, Stryd is a good option and that is how I use it.
For me the power number don't provide extra value over pace so I go by pace when planning and executing workouts.
If you are a pure runner (and not a multisport athlete) the power numbers may be a bit more useful but I'd still go by pace.
The Stryd measures pace very acurately if you don't run on very soft shoes.
Sam

I have one, and I love it. If my dog ate it, I would buy another. A friend of mine has one; he lost it and just bought another. Folks who have them tend to like them and demonstrated by their re-buy habits.

One great thing is that it provides fantastic instantaneous pace data.

I do like the power data. It is way better than Grade Adjusted Pace data for running to consistent effort level (and you cannot get GAP real time).

My fastest races have come buy running to a target power from start to finish. So, I would rate huge value there.

Where you get greatest value, and I have not done the shift, is training to power like on a bike. Those who have made this move claim greater gains than just having an awesome pod.

Thank you. This is what I am trying to understand - how running by power leads to better training and better results? Can you please explain - it would be best if you could explain through some example.

My dog did eat mine...and Stryd gave me 50% off a new one. Quality company

That said, it is fantastic for run speed and using with Zwift on the treadmill.

Running power is not anywhere close to where cycling is at. It's moderately useful at best. Like telling you what your power is on hilly areas can potentially help with pacing.

However it doesn't factor in surface/terrain and isn't really actually measuring power output at all. It's simply a calculation based on speed/weight/incline and wind for the newer models.

So a 6min mile on the track will read the same as a 6min mile running through sand on the beach. That's simply not real power data

One of the tabs broke off mine and they offered me a little pouch to put it in instead of standing behind their product.

It works well but I wouldn't buy another one, nor recommend one to someone else.

I would agree with some of the posts. You don’t need a Stryd Pod to improve your running. Pace and Perceived exertion is how the best runners in the world measure their runs. The ability to feel your pace is probably the metric you need to become the runner you want to become. I use Stryd for two reasons:

1. It’s more accurate than GPS.
2. I look at power as a way to measure my fitness. In January by top end Zone 2 power was 212. Today it’s 229. I use that number to verify a run. I’ll run an Easy to Moderate 10 miler. Some days I’m just tired and my body feels slow. I’ll just check the power after the run to make sure I was running easy moderate and didn’t somehow push too hard.

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Dave Jewell
Free Run Speed

I really don't care about the power but I bought it for pace/speed/distance for which it is bang on reliable. The other nice thing about it is I can set a "calibration factor" so that it measures my metrics accurately on the treadmill since that is one of the hardest things for a watch or footpod to do. But outside, my run metrics are spot on and it's nice to get instant pace values as opposed to using the GPS on the Garmin which is worthless in the moment and never as accurate as the STRYD.

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Cheers, Ray

i couldnt give two poos less about running with power. i dabbled in it with my stryd and it just seems like a gimmick, and the numbers never seemed to jive, line up, or be consistent.

that said, and as what others have said, i find the stryd to be invaluable regarding its instantaneous pace versus gps on the watch. i lost one with a pair of race shoes and immediately bought another one. moving between running outside and on the treadmill, its nice to be able to do everything i need with my watch and a footpod and know my pace is essentially the same indoors or out.

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80/20 Endurance Ambassador

It’s best used (for me) on treadmill running. I can have accurate paces. You have to use the app to record the run, and manually adjust the incline to get accurate #’s....

I was never able to make much sense of the power numbers. But I agree with Dameon. It’s great for real time pace. Like Exviiii, if my dog ate it, I’d buy another one. I get annoyed when I forgot which pairs of shoes it was last on and can’t find it.

So yeah, go for it.

Ok. So it seems there is an agreement here that the perceived value of stryd is not its power but its quality as a footpod device that measures pace correctly especially the instance pace and also you get a consistent pace between indoors and outdoors. Thank you all for that feedback - I thought I was missing something that made me not appreciate the value it offers as a power meter.
Also, I am still using Garmin Forerunner 920XT with a Garmin footpod. I've heard that Garmin's latest forerunner watches come with accelerometers that are rather precise and together with GPS produce precise pace outdoors and do pretty will indoors.
Does it makes sense to get a STRYD even if I upgrade to Garmin Forerunner 945?
Thanks.

Not to hijack the thread but does anyone else have conectivity issues with stryd and Garmin 945 - seems to work great for 45 minutes to an hour then the 945 loses stryd?

No matter how precise an accelerometer is on a watch its never going to match a foot pod because a watch is in the wrong place to do the job well. The end goal is to calculate the horizontal distance your foot moves forward each stride. This is relatively easy to do with a foot pod because you have the sensor exactly where it needs to be. Trying to work out stride distance from a wrist sensor is much harder and requires a ton of assumptions. The problem amplifies when running on a treadmill because your body has no net horizontal movements and so you really need to be directly measuring forward foot movement.

You are correct that the Garmin 945 has a little trick up its sleeve in terms of the ability to 'calibrate treadmill distance' which means your watch will better match the treadmill. IF (and this is a big if) you have carefully and correctly calibrated the treadmill itself they you are ok(ish) but it all depends on the speed you calibrated the watch vs the speed to do the workout and the stability of treadmill over the course of a workout. If you always run a personal treadmill with something like a Runn installed this is fine but for the vast majority of people a foot pod is a far superior option. Footpods should eliminate the need to calibration both the watch and treadmill so it is a fit and forget approach. In practice it may be a bit more complex and people do find they run differently indoors and outdoors and need to calibrate footpods for indoor running but it remains better than have to calibrate every treadmill you want to run on and then calibrate the watch after 1 mile each indoor run.

Do you have a power meter on a bike and use structured workouts (like TrainerRoad) that are indexed to your FTP?

Using a Stryd is essentially the same as training and racing with power on a bike. You calibrate your workouts to your critical power and do intervals and structured workouts indexed to your power. Then when you race, you target maintaining your target power during the race. I do the former, but not the latter. However, I use the critical power and targets that the Stryd website calculates for me. When I run an open race, I target my race power based on these numbers, and I run my fastest.

Worth mentioning the wind detection aspect as well. Search around FB for palladino power project and just read some of the forum. As mentioned by everyone else, if I lost my stryd I would replace it immediately. It is as useful to running as a power meter is to cycling; there's an FTP (they call it CP in the running world) that all your workouts are scaled to.

Here's a few links to sample workouts from my account:
3 x 7.5 minutes at 99% 'CP'
6 x 1 minute at 104% 'CP' long run

Just get it and use a power based training plan. It's awesome.

As many others have said I really like mine. I don’t have the wind version but tempted to upgrade. Bought it originally for the treadmill and wasn’t sure how I’d use it outside but just started a training plan and have been following it for a week. I don’t pay attention to it while running much, but I didn’t with pace either, but really like it for looking at the data. What was my pace to power? How does it compare to last months run? How is it for heart rate vs power? A lot of cool data if you want to analyze things. I don’t have many hills by me but the few inclines is nice to see how it changes. And I run with my daughter in a stroller most of the time so the power numbers help pace myself since actual pace means nothing when pushing a stroller.

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Thanks every one once again. Ok - when my Garmin footpod dies (it is Ant+ only - no bluetooth and Garmin does not make them anymore) I will then buy a STRYD.

Running power is nothing like cycling power. Garmin watches don’t natively support it, so you Can’t reallly use it the same way, It’s basically just a number on a screen, not 3s or 10s smoothing. And how to calculate the power number varies across brands. I’m not using stryd, But I’ve considered it, opted not to do it until Garmin supports it and I can easily see power zones, use it for intervals and such. You probably can do that if you want to, But I like to have current pace and distance on most of my screens. I am using the garmin RD pod, which provides a power number. It’s mainly used for cadence and Ground contact time, not that i’m really using it, But I like to look at the data and see what happens to those Numbers when running slower or faster.
I had a knee injury last summer and eventually it turned out I needed surgery to remove a small fragment. I kept eating as normal and gained 20kg’s in no time (it seems so, at least). When I got back out running, I saw the power Numbers were slightly higher than before my injury, only I was running more than 1minute/km slower than before. I Think that’s the most benefit I’ve had from the power Numbers.
Although a footpod in general is a great tool to track pace, especially on shorter interval, where GPS is way too slow. I wouldn’t buy a Stryd myself, because of the cost, But I want one

You can add the stryd app onto Garmin Connect IQ. I'd recommend 10s smoothing for power which is equivalent to 30s power on bike. I think there's some app that you can actually put in the zones. I just download the workout from trainingpeaks and it beeps when I get to different parts of my workouts.

To be fair, you can display stryd power to watch on intervals on a garmin 239, 920, 935, 945 and probably many more.

The connect IQ apps are what I mean by natively. I cant input my power zones, make workouts on garmin, which is a deal breaker for me. I dont want a page with only power data.
Another thing is, that I feel the Numbers when running are fluctuating much more than cycling. I want to love running power and I find the data useful when I get home - at least over a longer time, But during running I find it pretty useless at this time.

The data is fun to look at but you have to know how to use what you see for training/implement it in your daily routine (that's it's real value). Personally, I just use it for geek data, as my belief and experience is that when it comes to racing, you need to separate yourself from only using numbers. What you do on race day is not what you do daily in training. Few will, for example, be running a marathon for Ironman training let's say, and those numbers will differ greatly on race day for all the obvious reasons of it being one long strung out race. Additionally, look at it as a "supplement data set" to steer your daily training like you would a HRM, or power meter on the bike. Footwear also has an effect on that...at some point, in a race, you will have to use that super human mental (noodle) to go beyond anything you ever have done before, to get that break through performance. That's what racing is, maximizing your effort head to toe & mind to soul using all those fun little tools on a daily basis.

In summary, good to train with but I wouldn't pay attention much to it race day. KNOW THYSELF.

A lot of what you think about the Stryd is incorrect. It may not work the way you want it to, but neither does it work the way you think.

You can display Stryd power as just an ordinary field on the watch, like any other field. It can be zones, or one of several time averages. Or you can use a dedicated screen with lots of custom presentation. It actually works pretty well. The one big thing that does not work for me is that Strava does not recognize and process running power data.

Stryd's running power number seems remarkably stable and highly correlates with RPE. It is actually pretty fantastic in that regard.

Didn’t know it worked like that on garmin - they must have updated it since the last time I checked.
As for the displayed power - it’s not a stryd thing, what I mean is basically the same as cycling power without smoothing, it changes all the time. Aside from smoothing, which May be possible, there’s a Big difference from glancing Down on my cycling computer from time to time to looking at my watch. If the Numbers are smoothed, i Can see it working on a ling run, But not like a 10s or 400m interval - simply too awkward to have the arm in a position that makes it readable. As far as average power and lap power, I do see consistency on similar paces (assummng it’s flat), But that’s more an analytics after a run. I simply don’t find it as useful on the run as I do with power on the bike. Some May do, some May not, But that’s just my experience with it