I really don't understand why the speed cap in PoGo is so abysmally low. I mean, the speed lock in Ingress is set at 35 mph, which seems much more reasonable. My best bet is that raising the PoGo speed cap would let too many people hatch too many eggs - people would probably stop buying so many incubators, since the free incubator would be a lot more useful.
GamePress
Pogo and running = not the great combo it should be!
One of the truly great things about Pokemon Go is how it in people to get out in nature and get in shape. Which is why it is so sad that Pokemon Go really isn't very suitable for runners.
On the surface it sounds great: Keep in shape while getting buddy-miles and hatching eggs! Awesome!
But not so fast...
First up, running with an iphone just plain sucks. If the Apple Watch actually allowed you to use Pokemon Go without a phone, then I would buy one in an instant.
Second, I just went on my first run after the winter break. I ran my usual 5 km course through the forest. I 100% know this route to be actually a little over 5 km, because I have tracked it on my Garmin Forerunner a billion times (well, not quite). How much did Pokemon Go credit me for? A lousy 3,8 km, and I think I only got as much because I went on to walk the last half of the distance due to being in terrible shape.
It gets much worse if you go biking. I guess I can understand why you shouldn't earn buddy km by going on 100 km rides on your super racing bike at 40 km/h, but the speed limit makes it damn near impossible at even casual speeds. Keeping below 17 km/h is excruciating. Tried it yesterday. No fun at all.
So inadvertently, Pogo for me might end up actually getting myself in worse shape than if the game didn't exist, as now I just walk around instead of running/biking.
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Well, not really - I mean, there is a badge you get for walking a certain number of km, and you need a certain number of badges in order to progress from lvls 8 to 16. The main reason for the speed lock though has to do with the scoring system and is set up to reduce/prevent spoofing; it makes it so that a single player can't GPS spoof (or go speeding down the highway) to take out multiple portals holding up an opposing team's large fields. (A lot of the regional Ingress gameplay has to do with driving to very remote locations at odd hours of the night in order to create massive control fields over cities - people get verrrrrrry pissed when their 2AM efforts are thwarted by a spoofer.)
I'm not sure what you meant by saying that running with a phone sucked. I have been running while playing PoGo since August, and it has been great.
Actually, most of my PoGo experience is exactly that - playing while running. I live in the suburb and have to drive downtown to play. So a few times per week, I just pick suitable parks that are safe to run while I am a bit distracted (clear running path, not too crowded, etc.) and run for 6-8 km each time, catching Pokemon and spinning Pokestops along the way. Playing while running means I can cover longer distance, reach more Pokestops, and catch more Pokemon than walking, and it makes my time spent more valuable.
At this point, once I know what the Pokemon is, I can close my eyes and throw a curve ball with my left thumb and land it most of the time. Doing the same thing over and over for half a year will get you that.
Oh, and the best thing that has happened to me because PoGo is that I just finished a marathon a month ago. PoGo made me run, and running regularly gave me the drive to push the limits.
I wish more people run while playing PoGo, assuming they can do so safely, of course.
Maybe the speed cap is so low because they don't want people bicycling or driving through residential neighborhoods to hatch eggs. Bicycling doesn't really seem like it should get full credit towards egg hatching, and people could rack up distance really quickly this way. It's much less work to bicycle 5 km. than to walk or run it, and also much faster.
Unfortunately, Pokemon has never been good at tracking distance, even for walkers. It normally gives less, because it doesn't update distance often. When it does update, it draws a straight line from the last update. So the more curvy your path is the less credit you will get.
Although i prefer not to do this, I believe if you stop every once in a while (to catch a difficult mon, etc) it sometimes allows the program to catch up with you because I think the gps updates every 2 min. Where I lose the most is that my route is in a loop so I lose lots of Kms this way. If you run in a straight line that wait for the program to catch up with you, 2-3 min the run back you would book the Most kms I believe.
