PaceGuard: improving running cadence by real-time auditory feedback

This paper presents PaceGuard, a mobile phone-based system which supports runners in keeping their cadence by auditory feedback. Experts have reported that maintaining the cadence is a prominent challenge for many running beginners and less experienced runners. However, this is important to make the exercise healthy and effort-saving, and to avoid discomfort like side stitches. PaceGuard automatically determines a suitable target cadence on the basis of the measured accelerometer data of the first 150 seconds of a run. Then this cadence as the guideline is constantly signaled to the runner via rhythmic pulse beats, defined as beats per minute. On the basis of previous studies [5], we assume runners will adapt their cadence to the presented pulse beats and thus will run more consistently compared to running without the auditory feedback of PaceGuard. Our pilot study results encourage this assumption.