Meredith Dietz

Meredith Dietz Senior Staff Writer

Experience

Meredith is a marathon runner and stand-up comedian. As Lifehacker’s Senior Staff Writer, she covers personal fitness tech, home gym equipment, and more.

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April 20, 2026

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Table of Contents

I spent the last month testing and reviewing the Garmin Forerunner 970 , and my biggest disappointment (one of only a few) was that I couldn't use it to test my running economy, since it requires a heart rate monitor like Garmin's HRM-600 chest strap . At the same time, it does lend a lot of legitimacy to Garmin's running economy metric, knowing it requires key inputs like heart rate, stride length, ground contract time, vertical oscillation, and step speed loss.

"Running economy" has a lot of buzz around it right now.…