The Milestone Pod : Some good running data to be had from this little gizmo

It just sits there laced into my shoe, dormant and barely noticeable, until a few rapid shocks spring it into action. It's the Milestone Pod, one of these new wearable fitness gadgets the Milestone folks asked me to try out for review. You don't need to do a thing to get a good running data from it. That's exactly the way Milestone CEO Jason Kaplan wants it, who says "We're trying to create an experience for runners while doing nothing." It retails for about 25 bucks and doesn't require the hassle of carrying a smart phone around on your run, making it one of the better running gadget values out there.

Milestone Pod App Interface

Here's how the pod works. You simply lace it into your shoes, and the pod starts counting any small shocks as foot strikes and when it counts 100 or more foot strikes a minute for six minutes, it figures I've started my run and captures those last six minutes of accelerometer data. If my running cadence drops below 100, the pod thinks I must stuck at a traffic light, taking a quick drink, or otherwise stopped running for a spell and doesn't include that data into the run. Once my cadence falls below 100 strikes a minute for six minutes, the pod considers the run over.

Once all that run data is captured, I upload it wirelessly to my phone using the Milestone Pod app which crunches the numbers and displays various metrics related to running speed and form. The app displays running form metrics including cadence, stride length, how long my foot is in contact with the ground (stance time), rate of impact, and leg swing as a function of running pace. It also calculates the overall distance covered in the run.

I've found these results most useful as a reality check on recovery/maintenance runs as well as long runs. The pod tells me a lot about these slower paced runs like how fast I actually went and what my form was like. If I feel ragged the day after a hard workout, the pod usually picks that up by measuring longer stance time and reduced leg swing. There's a "Runficiency" metric the biomechanical engineers at Milestone cooked up to determine an overall level of running efficiency that seems to do a good job in telling me when I'm having a good day form wise, or when I need to be working on lifting my knee a little higher.

Towards the end of this run, my stance time went
down and my paced quickened

Having an all knowing pod on my foot has caused me to be more conscious about form, and have found myself thinking "Reduce that stance time"  or "Keep your knees up" during a run rather than simply thinking "Run faster".  Wouldn't you know, once I get home and download the data, I invariably find that when these form modifications results in running faster with little or no perceptible change in effort. Success!

The pod also generates good results for track workouts or tempo runs where my pace reaches or exceeds race pace, which for me is in the 6:00-7:00 per mile range. Of course for this kind of fast running, you really need real time feedback from a watch, so the pod is more of an additional, "after the fact" tool to see how the workout went. One thing I noticed on these workouts was the pod always calculated a shorter distance than I actually covered at these faster paces. A test with a couple runs at 6:10 / mile pace and 7:00 / mile pace on a track confirmed this.  While the pod's distance calculations when I ran at 8:00 / mile or slower pace were pretty accurate, at 7:00 / mile pace the pod calculates a distance about 8%  shorter than I actually ran, and at 6:10 / mile pace, it under counts distance by 15%.

I shared these results with Milestone Pod CEO Jason Kaplan, who acknowledged this could be a limitation of the pod.  As he explains, "Out of the box, the Milestone Pod is more accurate at moderate to lower speeds than high speeds. We offer calibration which makes the Pod accurate for runners at any speed. However, because we calculate distance based on footstrike and gait characteristics, if your form changes as you increase of decrease speed, then we may lose some accuracy. For some, the Pod will remain accurate at any speed if their gait characteristics remain relatively stable even thought their speed changes."

It should be noted my gait is not typical as I run almost exclusively on my toes. At any rate, this wasn't a deal breaker for me even though many important workouts are run at varying speeds, which the pod won't measure completely accurately, no matter how I calibrate it. Thus, it will require more interpretation of the data as I look over the graphs to see how my form was during these workouts.

As running gadgets go, I'm a lot like the Amish. I adapt pretty slowly to the latest running technology. Having run for 35 years, running success is mostly about hard work and effort, and you're not going to get that from any gadget. However, the right tools provide the information to expend that hard work in the right direction. I'm training for the Napa Valley Marathon this coming March and the Milestone Pod will undeniably help me get to the finish line.