I Calibrated My Treadmill

October 12, 2007 · 4 comments

I mentioned before that my heart rate was occasionally exceeding my maximum heart rate during my cardio workouts.  Now that I have purchased a proper heart rate monitor and have calibrated my treadmill I am confident that never happened, and even if it did it won’t happen again because I am not running as fast as I was before.

When you only have your treadmill to judge by you really just trust what it says for speed.  After being on my cardio program for awhile I had a pretty good feel for how fast my paces for both walking and running were, and how much my heart was beating during the running portions.

The first time I used another treadmill I was surprised at how slower I was moving.  Then I used another treadmill at another hotel and on it too I was moving slower.  Both of these foreign machines were high-quality treadmills.  So I knew something was up with mine.

Fortunately the instructions for my treadmill, which is almost 10 years old now, were still sealed up inside the machine.  So I was able to determine how to turn on the diagnostics mode and calibrate the speed.  What I found was that the treadmill was running at .8 mph faster than what it was showing on the display.  So my warm-up walks of 3.5 mph were really 4.3 mph and my running pace of 5.0 mph was really 5.8 mph.

Now that I have my treadmill calibrated correctly I have starting pushing up the pace, as well as the incline which I set up to 3 degrees.  I am staying with 5.0 mph as my target running pace but now I think I’ll be able to get there faster.  I had thought I was going to have to stay at Week 2 of the couch to 5k for a few more weeks but now I am thinking that next week I may graduate to week 3.  My heart rate is staying in a range between 135 and 150 during the cardio which is much better.

If you use a treadmill it would be a good idea to calibrate it.

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{ 4 comments }

GroovyBabe October 12, 2007 at 12:00 pm

Where did you get your heart rate monitor? I’ve been after one of those…

Israel October 12, 2007 at 2:55 pm

good id cause my treadmill makes me feel like i am running fast, but when i run outside it feel as slow as a statue.

workoutmommy October 12, 2007 at 8:14 pm

good idea, I never even thought to do this. My treadmill always feels strange to me. Thanks for the tip!

john - from fat to fit October 13, 2007 at 4:43 am

Posted about my heart rate monitor today - http://www.johnisfit.com/2007/10/13/my-heart-rate-monitor/

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