my apple watch distance is way off

I plan on going out on a run tomorrow morning, so I haven't had a chance to try it just yet. Someone on the iMore forums did say he went on a 5-mile run, and it was spot on until mile 2, then dropped behind .15 miles, and stayed there until the end of the run (no further drifting). It appears like a single loss of GPS signal halfway through, which sometimes has been known to happen, and which of course screwed up the overall pace. He did say however that his instant pace throughout seemed correct otherwise, since the estimate was generally spot-on.

I've updated my response with an second-hand account I've just spotted 🙂

No improvement after 1.0.1 update. In fact is slightly worse for me. See below. Both Nike and Runkeeper are nearly identical and workout is at 11.5K so off by 0.7-0.8K which is huge. I'd accept 0.1-0.2 as a rounding error but this is unusable. Not apple supports response to me is that it is 3rd party apps that are wrong not their unproven version 1.0 app that we are all having problems with. Note in past I've also distanced off this particular run with a Garmin as well and can control 12.2K is the true distance. Pretty annoyed by Apple on this one so far. Also note this run was done with calibration on. I now have 4+ hours of calibrated runs and it just seems to be getting worse. Don't even want to thibk about how bad it would be if I ran without the phone...

Same issue here--I seem to be off ~.10-.15 per mile, but it doesn't stay consistent over every mile I run. The first one is pretty consistently off, but subsequent miles don't drop quite so much distance. I am also running with the phone horizontal in a SPIbelt. New OS update made no change. I have an open case with Apple support too.

No improvement for me. I just ran 3.5 miles (on a course where I know that's the correct distance) and the Apple Watch says 3.16 miles. RunKeeper says 3.52 miles, so it's not the GPS. I'm very disappointed that they didn't fix this. iPhone is in a spibelt around my waist during run.

(Outdoor cycling still is getting the distance correct, and I use RunKeeper at the same time, so I don't think it's a problem with both apps running.)

I called Apple Support as well. The agent had me reset the watch. I'll see how it goes after the next run. And I'll use an arm band just in case (I had tried one before the 1.0.1 update to no effect.)

I've had my watch for a couple of weeks now and have found that the distances are very different from RunKeeper which I have been using for years (and is very accurate). For example, one of my regular 4.64 mile runs is being calculated at 5.73 with the watch. I would expect somewhat different results between GPS and non-GPS apps, but that's quite a significant difference. I do like the convenience of the watch over carrying my iPhone, so I am holding out hope that the accuracy will be improved.

I went on a 6-mile run just now and while RunKeeper was spot on, Workout was off by as much as prior to the 1.0.1 update. I wonder if it will take a few more runs to recalibrate after the update, or if I might need to un-pair and re-pair my Watch…

I did find that instant pace, however, appeared accurate.

Some people have mentioned that carrying the phone in your pocket (vertically) rather than in a belt pouch (horizontally) has helped. Might be worth a shot…

I've logged some additional runs, all with the iPhone in an armband. After resetting and recalibrating since updating to 1.0.1, I'm still seeing distances off by 5-10%. I did notice that my first calibration runs on flat, level surfaces at an even pace were pretty accurate. However, I do nearly all my runs on uneven, hilly surfaces, with much more variation in pace and arm movement, and these are all inaccurate on the Apple Watch (even though the iPhone GPS data captures these runs accurately). It makes sense that it would be difficult for motion calibration to really "understand" how arm movement translates to distance on these hilly, uneven runs.

Since I'm happy to run with my phone anyway, I wish there were a setting to let the GPS override the calibration data. I submitted this as a suggestion to Apple. In the meantime, I'll trust RunKeeper with my actual running stats, and take the workout app and activity rings with a big grain of salt!