What is pace in walking exercise?

[RPO6825]

Greetings all:

My favorite exercise is walking. One of the parameters in walking is "pace." The output is usually some ridiculous number like 156'55". Can anyone explain to me what these numbers mean? Thanks in advance.

Regards,

Roy

[LZeeW · Accepted solution]

Hello @RPO6825 and welcome to the Help forums.  Pace is minutes per mile or minutes per kilometer.  So if you are in the US, it is saying you are taking two and a half hours to walk a mile.  That 156' 55" is 156 minutes and 55 seconds.  I have seen ridiculous numbers like your under two circumstances:

1. Walking in place with with the Walk exercise app and the GPS on
2. Walking on a treadmill accidentally using Walk with the GPS on instead of Treadmill

In both of those circumstances, you don't travel any distance and get a wacky number.

Pace is the inverse of speed.

[RPO6825]

Thanks. What confused me was the ‘ and the “ looked like feet and inches. After I made post and I looked at it again, I thought maybe that’s minutes and seconds. But it still didn’t make a lot of sense because of the high numbers. Well, anyway. Thanks for the info. 

[LZeeW]

@RPO6825   Yes, those of us who use feet and inches immediately think of feet and inches because our brains become wired to think that way.  "Casual" athletes tend to think about their stats using speed.  More competitive athletes report their stats as pace.  Many users have asked Fitbit to report walking speed, not pace.  Fitbit has no plans to change this.

With respect to your exercise, you did a GPS connected exercise but didn't change your position much during the exercise.  So there is a third choice.  You did a GPS connected walk, but didn't carry your phone.

Those symbols are also used for latitude and longitude.  Positions are reported as degrees, minutes, and seconds of latitude and longitude. 

[RPO6825]

Greetings LZeeW:

There must be a bug in the walk portion of the exercise function in Fitbit. When I get ready to walk, I activate Walk and wait for it to connect to my phone. Then I hit start and begin walking. For some reason it is not processing distance or pace. It gives pace as --'--" and distance as something ridiculous like 0.05. However, it accurately creates a map, records elapsed time, heart data, and elevation. I usually walk about 1.5 to 2 miles in 45 to 50 minutes. Also, I do have some past sessions the did record accurately. I think my data is shareable if you are interested in seeing some 

What do you think?

Regards.