Cadence

Just an update on the Polar S3+ foot pod front. I received it a few weeks ago and no extra import charges so yeah to that.  I've been running with it off and on and don't really like it.  I guess I've gotten spoiled with the GPS watches which are relatively consistent.

The problem with the foot pod is it needs to be calibrated but only is accurate at the pace it was calibrated at.  For someone like me who is all over the place with paces doing 9:30 recovery runs and 7:00 LT runs, this doesn't work very well for me, so distance wise, it isn't very accurate.  But that's okay, I really got it for the cadence feed back, but what I didn't realize at the time I bought it, is that my Polar RC3 GPS watch has no way of displaying cadence during a run, which I find absolutely ridiculous.  I can find out the average once the run is over for the entire run, but if I want any more info, I have to upload the data to the polar website.  So hey I can uplaod the info and find out after the fact that I should have had a higher turnover. Of course, I already know that. I wanted to be able to determine that info by a glance at my watch as opposed to having to count my footsteps manually for 60 seconds.

As for what data i have determined, it's pretty much what I expected. I can get to 90 on recovery runs when I'm wearing my Brooks PureConnects which are minimalist shoes. For long runs when I don't really concentrate on cadence, I 'm about 86 or so and tempo runs, I'm at 92.

So here's my run as a pacer at Midsummer Night's run 15k.  https://www.polarpersonaltrainer.com/shared/exercise.ftl?shareTag=81c57d22cde9901d1d9a1c75eb424d96
even though I had calibrated it at 8:00 min/miles, it thought i was going a bit slower and so it got the mileage wrong. My cadence was around 89 for most of the race and dropped down a bit towards the end. 

Part of me is now thinking that maybe I should get the garmin footpod.  I know the garmin can display cadence on the fly and in hindsight if I had known that the polar watch didn't display cadence, I probably would have gone down that route.  It would mean having to wear two watches at times since I love the polar for HR data and absolutely despise the HR strap that comes with the garmin. But since I wouldn't need cadence data on every run, it would be doable. As it is right now, I usually wear the garmin for pace runs since the polar watch doesn't have a lap pace display which I also think is ridiculous.  Polar makes such great hardware, but their software is extremely lacking in places.