What Do Sensors Know about Your Running Performance?

About 489 000 athletes have finished a marathon in the US in 2009, the average training distance of athletes is 47.5 km per week. While average fitness runners (55.8%) train by self perception, a systematic assessment of kinematic parameters is limited to elite athletes that have access to instrumented environments. This work investigates the potential of wearable sensors to derive kinematic features in running. We equipped 12 runners of different performance levels with each 12 miniature ETHOS units. ETHOS constitutes a miniature inertial measurement unit (IMU) that is optimized for long term monitoring in unconstrained environments. We found that a minimum set of two acceleration sensors attached to the athlete's foot and hip is sufficient to derive kinematic features that allow for distinction of experienced and unexperienced runners. Our work constitutes a first step towards personal training assistance providing runners kinematic metrics for performance improvement and injury risk reduction.