Hi there.
Got my Runn today. Thought it would be a quick installation. But…
First of all it wouldnt update to new software in ConfigurEZ. After three times, it went through and it got updated.
Then I started the treadmill. I had installed it with 3 tapes. 45 cm apart. The treadmill speed was 3km/h and the Runn spead in ConfigurEZ was 9,9 km/h! I have tried factory reset in the app, I have tried to reset it with the white button. Tried less tape, tried different places on the treadmill.
Nothing works. Only when I do a manual calibration. But thats why I bought this thing. To see how wrong my numbers are on my Sole F85.
Someone correct me if I am wrong, but the Runn is not going to be able to determine the correct speed of the belt for you. It is not measuring the time/distance between the tape marks, it is measuring the time/distance of laps around the belt. You need the treadmill to be accurate to start with. When you do the calibration, you are trying to get the Runn to match the treadmill measurement.
One thing you can do to check the treadmill speed is to physically measure the length of the belt and then turn it on and time a certain number of “laps” of the belt. Do the manual calculation of the distance/time to get your speed and compare that with the setting on the treadmill. If it matches, great, calibrate to that. If it doesn’t, you can try to calibrate the Runn to the calculated speed at a certain setting (if that make sense).
I’ve written about this before but I’ll give you the detail again as it’s always worth a reminder.
With the Runn you have 2 choices. You can have it reporting the speed of the belt or you can have it matching the reported speed of your treadmill. In an ideal world these will match but rarely do and I’ll go through this.
Your treadmill will report the speed at which it thinks the belt speed is moving at. The belt speed is determined by how much power is being put to the motor which then turns the front roller and rotates the belt. The treadmill itself is not measuring the belt speed.
So the speed the belt is moving at can be different to that of which the treadmill is reporting.
Dependant on the quality of treadmill a belt can slow down under load. Might be fine when you’re not running on it but when you are it may struggle to maintain its speed. Particularly with a heavier runner. The less power the motor has the more this will be. This is why when using the Runn in Zwift you will see your speed “bouncing” up and down. It could be up to 0.5kmh either way. The better quality of treadmill motor the less this will be.
Your treadmill belt speed may also just be wrong compared to reported speed. As eluded to above you can measure this. Ideally you need a digital tachometer which will allow you to measure the actual speed using a calibrated device. You can manually do this by counting the number of revolutions of the belt over a period of time. Using the length of the belt this will give you a rough belt speed. However if you miscount by 1 the reported speed will be 0.2kmh out. Do it several times to make sure. The faster you set the speed the harder it is to count.
So you have a choice. If you leave the Runn uncalibrated in game (the spanner icon on the pairing screen) then it will report belt speed.
If you want your in game speed to match that on your treadmill then use that spanner icon and calibrate the Runn to your reported speed. However this isn’t ideal and you will find that it doesn’t cope too well with varying speeds. Might be OK at say 10kmh but go 16kmh and it’ll be out. Try and calibrate the middle figure of the calibration process to the pace you run at normally.