If you run or walk a lot on your treadmill and notice the distance on your Garmin watch is WAY off, you’re not alone.

It’s been a big frustration of mine. Even though you can edit in Garmin afterwards, it messes up your pace. If you’ve got Garmin set up with Strava to push workouts automatically, editing in Garmin quickly isn’t quick enough before the workout is sent to Strava. And you can’t edit at all in Strava – you have to delete, and add a manual entry, which then won’t include your average pace at each mile or km or other useful metrics.

Unfortunately, the only way you can calibrate your watch to match your treadmill distance is to run or walk over a certain distance (on your watch that is).

The calibrate option is only available on your watch when your distance (on your watch) is over a certain distance – either 1 or 1.5 miles (1.6 – 2.4 km)

Your treadmill might say 4 km, but your watch says 1 km. How do you change this?

The calibrate option appears when you finish your workout, within the list that includes ‘save’. You can change the distance, which is then correctly updated to Garmin and, if you’re using it, Strava.

Calibrating your watch makes it more accurate in future workouts.

My walking distance

I walk for 20 minutes each morning on my treadmill. This logs on my watch as around .9 – 1.20 km and on my treadmill as around 1.50km.

This means the option to calibrate never appears on my Garmin, so I have to edit my distance every day. I ignore Strava for walks now because it’s never correct.

I’d need to walk for at least 40 mins at my fastest pace, for the calibrate option to appear.