I bought a new polar monitor and foot pod a month or so ago. Calibrated it, and have been using it on tempo runs and long runs. I’m wondering what the accuracy of the pace is? And how does it work? I’m just curious.
It’s an accelerometer. It works on the movement of the foot; when it is speeding up and slowing down, how much time it spends it the air, etc…and plugs it into a formula. Pretty darned accurate, as few things will throw it off: snow, trail running, not putting it on the shoe snug enough… If I had to wager a guess, i’d say it’s about 98% accurate
Eric
why would those things (snow, trails, not snug) throw it off?
variations in the movement of the foot. It can even be thrown off my too much over pronation (possibly). If your foot is constantly being thrown around while running on trails, then the distance could be off. If the pod is not snug, the pod will get a little bounce to it. I haven’t had these problems, but they could come up.
Eric
Actually it can be pretty accurate, but remember when you calibrate it, you calibrate it for certain conditions. the following will "change " the calibaration.
- Terrain (gravel, dirt, track)
- Elevation
- Your running speed
- Your running style
- The shoe you are wearing
- The tightness of your laces.
The best thing is to have the elastic laces on your running shoes and to leave the pod permanently on them.
I recently changed my running style after reading JonnyO’s IMAZ report and I upped my cadence significantly. I had to recalibrate the pod after this.
But once calibrated I run IMSA with it and on a marathon it was accurate to within a few hundred metres.!!!
I use it and it works great. I calibrated it on a track but I run on gravel road most of the time. I recently check the accuracy of a run using google maps, and it was real close. To me, if the foot pad registered 7.1 miles but in reality I ran 7.2 or 7.0 miles, It’s good enough for training purposes and doesn’t justify buying a GPS unit.
Bobby