8,153
edits
Changes
From Fellrnr.com, Running tips
no edit summary
The cheapest way is to measure your cadence is to simply count how many times your foot touches the ground in a minute. However, it's much easier to use a [[Best Running Watch| running watch]] that displays cadence. Some watches will use a small [[Footpod]] attached to your shoe, but others make use of an internal accelerometer.
==Comparison of Cadence Monitors==
[[File:Cadence Comparison.jpg|none|thumb|1000px|A comparison of cadence monitoring devicesduring [[High Intensity Interval Training]].]]
The graph above is from a [[High Intensity Interval Training]] session, which is a challenging test of Cadence monitors. The [[Warmup]] and [[Cooldown]] sections of the run are not included, just the intervals. You can see the cadence rise to above 100 during the fast, high intensity intervals, then drop back to my more normal 90, then a further drop as I walk for a short period before commencing the next interval. I don't normally walk, but I wanted to challenge the cadence monitors a little extra. I avoided looking at any device during the run, as that can prevent the internal accelerometer based systems from operating without the normal arm swing.
* I wore five watches, two [[Footpod]]s and the Garmin HRM Run sensor for the run.
* The red line is from a [[Garmin 225]] that is relying on its internal accelerometer. The Garmin 225 is firmly strapped onto my wrist to ensure its optical heart rate monitor is effective. This is rather tighter than I would like, and mostly it does okay. You can see it's a little delayed in some of its responses, and at the 5:00 and 6:30 minute marks it misses the rise completely. While it's far from perfect, it does a reasonable job.
* The orange line is from an [[Suunto Ambit3]] using its internal accelerometer. The Ambit3 was reasonably firmly strapped to my arm, but nowhere near as tight as the Garmin 225. I suspect it's this looseness that causes the poor data for the Ambit3. You can see that on the fast intervals the Ambit3 loses the plot completely and assumes that my cadence drops to zero.
[[File:Cadence Comparison2.jpg|none|thumb|1000px|A comparison of cadence monitoring devices during a [[Long Run]].]]
The graph above is the comparison of a [[Garmin 920XT]] with a [[Footpod]] (red line) with a [[Garmin 225]] using its internal accelerometer (blue line). You can see the internal sensor is far noisier, but worse, it has an overall bias. The Footpod showed an average cadence of 91.1 while the internal sensor was 89.3. That's not a huge difference, but it's far from ideal.
I plan to perform further tests of the internal accelerometer based devices as time allows.
=Changing Cadence=
