is my fitbit accurate

[LauraLouP]

I keep reading posts with people saying they are nowhere near 5k after 30 minutes. I normally run as son as i get up and when i got home yesterday (w9r1) my fitbit was at 5.5k. I know that includes the 5 minute warm up and 5 minute cool down. I was so pleased but after reading other posts I'm now worried that i may not be going as far as i thought

[Hidden]

Not sure about Fitbits (don't know how they work ? pedometer or GPS ?) but I know my phone Endomondo (GPS) will happily add on a random 1km or so here and there ! (Hence gone back to using the Garmin now I'm running the continuous runs).

Or you might be super fit !! My warm up / cool down walk totals approx 1k - so you could be doing 4.5k in 30 mins

[LauraLouP Graduate in reply to Hidden]

it's a pedometer as when pushing a trolley round tesco no steps get recorded!

It has been fairly consistent and slightly increasing as i went form 25 minutes to 28 minutes and now 30 minutes - so i am hopeful it is not too far out?!?

[Hidden in reply to LauraLouP]

You're perhaps alright then if you've got the right stride length set, if its a pedometer ? My (albeit cheap) pedometer is rubbish in the house with very high step counts, but seems to get the number of steps just about ok on a proper walk.

Do you have an alternative way of measuring the distance (e.g. phone) just as a check ?

[RachySP in reply to LauraLouP]

I have found that too

[Rignold]

Go to Mapmyrun and plot the course of your route and it will tell you the distance.

[RachySP]

I wear a fitbit and run on a treadmill. I get on the treadmill and walk slowly whilst I plug the phone in to listen to Laura and then I'm off. I do a couple of minutes extra walking at the end till the treadmill tells me I've done 3.5 miles (5.6K), uaually just short of 45 minutes in total, this does roughly correspond with what fitbit tells me. Its usually a little short but I haven't adjusted for the fact that my running stride is slightly longer than my walking stride. But to be honest the fitbit is there to encourage me to move more during the days that I'm not running I haven't attempted to use it to accurately measure any distance I travel so to that end it does its job. But as long as you've set you stride up correctly it and compared to my own experience you don't sound too far out.

[MarkyD Graduate]

There are quite a range of FitBit products now, with several generations of pedometry software. When you stop and think about it, it's amazing that a FitBit Flex - worn on your wrist - can actually work out when you are taking a step, and when you are simply moving your arm. The 'belt-worn' trackers like FitBit One have a slightly easier job.

Anyway, my point is that no step-tracker is ever going to be perfectly calibrated when compared to a GPS running watch. For a start, the FitBit (or whatever) does not know your stride length, and so the distance that it calculates is a best estimate.

But this does not really matter. What is important is how your distance compares to yesterday. So long as your distance is gradually increasing during C25K (as you are running for a longer time), that's OK.

I would simply accept the '5.5km' that your FitBit is telling you. Take Rig's advice and measure the route MapMyRun (but don't be disappointed if it is not 5.5km). If your FitBit tells you next week that you ran 4.0km, then you know you have not done as much as this week: it is all relative.

Rachy has it right - any of these activity trackers are there to encourage you to move more, mainly by offering 'number of steps per day'. If you want to know exact distance during your run, then take a smartphone, or use a running watch.

[AvatheGardener Graduate]

Haha! I went on a treadmill a couple of weeks ago- fair play to people who can run on them regularly, I found it incredibly hot, incredibly dull- and I was incredibly dehydrated and wobbly after dismounting! But the main point of this waffling is that I set mapmyrun and off I went- doh! 😀 I'm such an airhead it was 10 mins in before I remembered it would record nothing because I was in the exact same place the whole time... Heh!

[LauraLouP Graduate]

Thanks for all the comments. I ran this morning and fitbit said around 5k. Just put it in map my run and that said 5.45 so think it is fairly accurate. The health app on my phone is very similar too so think I'll trust the fitbit. Yeh!!

[ashishkulkarni Graduate]

If you have GPS switched on, your fitbit will be accurate within 5% to 10%.

Why not check the map from your fitbit run against mapometer for distance?