Pedometers

A mate of mine has bought a pedometer to help his training. Are they accurate? Do they really work?
Some advice needed please!
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Comments

  • Timex and Nike SDM are supposed to be pretty accurate, but there are a bit pricey. You can get much cheaper ones but I don't know how accurate these are. There is loads of map measuring software available, I use www.map24.co.uk
  • I've got a really basic one which is in fact a Weight Watchers 'bonus Buddy' which can measure distance. It's about 2/10 of a mile out as I've got it set when compared to computer clock thingy in car and the official distance of a local race. I think accuracy depends on how you set them. but not bad for an idea of how far you've gone.
  • Santa bought me a cheapie, on which I was very careful about setting up correctly (over a long distance to allow for stride changes).

    wore it for my long weekender yesterday. Car said I'd done 12 miles, peddie said 15.37 miles!

    I know which I'd prefer to believe but serious I do doubt the accuracy of anything but the expensive GPS jobbies. (More's the pity)

    S.
  • I use 2 cheapies (Argos about a tenner)to keep track of shoe mileage. Accurate enough for me and I'm going to get another for my anorak. (I measure all my runs in minutes anyway - love those 140m weeks in the diary- so who cares how far.)
  • No that's not one for the right foot and one for the left. I'm very careful about alternating the direction of circular runs in order to even out shoe wear, muscular development, dizziness etc so I assume both shoes wear at about the same speed. (Although why do shoelaces always wear out faster in the right shoe? Not in Running shoes of course, because most shoelaces outlast the shoes and I have drawerfulls of part worn shoelaces (one drawer for left and another for right of course) salvaged from worn out running shoes.)
    No, I wear one pedometer with one pair of shoes and the other with my other pair. Or I think I do. It's dark when I go out so maybe I'm not totally consistent. It's a worry.
  • I used a ped about twice , I dont think they have any real training value as your pace is bound to change throughout a run, cant vouch for any GPS type system though. The wife uses one for weight watchers and its fairly accurate because she is just walking
  • "She is just walking". Do I hear the wife sharpening the wing clippers?
  • Cheers for all your help, I tend to clock runs in the car, but I'll look into these gadgets although, I'm a bit of a tight arse so it may well be Argos for me.
  • The Argos ones are OK and by juggling the stride length input you could probably get it to match the car measurement (or an accurately measured race distance) quite well. If you can do sums. Mind you, the same route can produce different readings on them depending on the speed you run at - something to do with Relativity and speed of light I imagine, or possibly stride length.

    Though if stride lengthens as speed increases then the mileage reading for a given route should go down and when I run faster the mileage reading goes up. Well, that's fine by me, but I don't think it's right. Still, the inconsistency is consistent if you see what I mean and it's a good enough approximation for me. It's only a game isn't it.

    Isn't it?
  • I used to have one and used to deride it as being inaccurate, because after all, all they do is record how often you jiggle them up and down.
    You input your stride length, they measure how often you jiggle them, they multiply the two and give an answer.
    All completely inaccurate, unless your stride length is constant, which it never is, due to hills, mud, wind, tiredness, speed, mood, etc, etc.
    And then it gave me a distance to 3 decimal places (plus telling me how many calories I'd burned, even though I couldn't input my weight...)

    Then I lost it. And suddenly was aware how much I missed it.

    So now I have a new one. Have spent weeks fiddling with the stride length, calibrating it against an approx 5 mile route that I measured with the bike computer (another story how to calibrate that !) until it matches.

    Now I can go out on a Sunday morning, run for a couple of hours and can tell, reasonably accurately that I've done 15 miles. If I got out the string and the map, I could work-out if it was 14.5 or 15.5, but I can't be bothered with that.

    If it works for you, get one, use it. Nike or Timex SDM is hundreds of pounds, these things are a tenner.
  • Yeah, three decimal places of totally specious accuracy for only a tenner. Love it. Mine told me this morning I'd been out for 14 mins 11 seconds, done 1.724 miles and used 1.567 Mars Bars (you have to know a special code to calibrate this bit). I'd been out for 35 mins on the usual 3.624 mile route and hadn't eaten a single Mars Bar. Must have been running really smoothly.
  • I threw mine in the bin about 2 years ago when I discovered that not only was the distance way out but the time it recorded for my runs was 'short' aswell. Since I used a stopwatch instead I've never been able to repeat my earlier pedometer times !
  • Last night I went for a run in the snow, when I got back I measured my average pace and found it was 33 inches, now my pedometer goes to 3.9 then 4.0 so how can I transfer 33 inches to that ?

    Pleae note i am a metric person and feet and inches are a bit of a mystery
  • I tried one out, but frankly found it was a complete waste of time. Stride length varies with terrain and so unless you're always on the same terrain to that on which you measured your stride length, it's fairly meaningless. In addition as Andy said they only work if they 'jiggle' and they don't most of the time.
    Better establishing a known distance of a few hundred metres and then working out your speed by timing yourself. After a while you'll have enough confidence to estimate your speed and should be able to gauge your distance relatively accurately.
  • I take it back , I took my pedometer out the other night and after cal'ing it found it was only off by 10th of a mile.
  • annajoannajo ✭✭✭
    Used mine for my long run yesterday, and it measured up as 11.3 but I suspect I didn't quite reach 11 miles. Passed the time towards the end of my run working out how much it was out by, and doing long and complicated calculations in my head about how much exactly to change the calibration of it, which passed quite a lot of time for me (especially after the 1 1/2 hour mark!)
  • Like Andrew Whaley have put mine in the bin, it recorded 0.6 miles and 15 minutes for a 3 mile run in 31 minutes - the day before on the same run completely different reading. Now use car and watch. Mind you was a cheapie for Giles Sports.
  • Have dead cheap one from Decathlon - 12.99 euro. Measure time on seperate stopwatch. Play around with the calibration depending on route and as others pass time on long runs trying to work out the maths.....
  • I bought my sister a pedometer that is based on accelaromator technology so its the most accurate available and its about £35 but well worth it, she uses it in aerobics class aswell as running...its an Omron HJ112 and I got it from London Marathon Store also found info at www.findastockist.com
  • I had a cheapie one and it was rubbish.For ages I really underestimated my running speed because the pedometer read 7.6kph which is only slightly faster than walking.Gave up and used the thread + A-z method which is more accurate.Got a new pedometer for last christmas but haven't got round to setting it up...seems a bit complex.
  • just flagging this thread up again in light of recent pedometer revival due to walkers crisps, itv and now bbc fat nation giveaway

    interesting review of pedometer accuracy here

    http://walking.about.com/cs/measure/a/pedaccuracy04.htm

    and confirms what the UK govt researchers found when they first thought of the 10 000 steps a day program
    ie that the Yamax Digi-Walker is one of the most accurate ones
    and that alot of them are a a long way out
  • normal pedos can be more than inaccurate...but the HJ112/3 from Omron are useing accelaromator technology
  • The pedometer I had was no good to me because even though it was quite a pricey one, I wanted to wear it all day to do the 10,000 steps thing. But if you got in a car on on bus or whatever, it counted every tiny bump in the road as a step. There seemed to be no way of temporarily "pausing" it either.

    Do the Omron ones with the new technology overcome this, or are there at least ones I can temporarily disable when I know I'm not walking but might register "false" steps?

  • There are a couple of ways that pedometers filter out 'false' steps. 

    One is time related, so that after say 4 or 6 seconds of movement the pedometer starts to count.  Therefore if going over a long stretch bumpy road (for example) it could lead to accumulating a lot of false steps.

    Other pedometers however use a different filter technology that requires you to do a certain number of steps in a row before it starts to record your step count.  This would get over your car/bus journey problem.   The other good news is that it can be lower cost pedometers that have this type of filter.

    advice with pedometers and step counters

  • I used a Omron pedometer, it's good for my walking everyday, pity it's broken. i seach google would like to get a free one, and find pedometerhk.com can supply a gps pedomter, hope i can get one...everyone who know this website or ever got one?
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