I Pit My Pedometer(pathetic, really)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

You want to improve your health? You want to amass data on daily performance re: exercise and calorie expenditure?

Well, join a health club–there is no help or hope here. I pit all equipment that provides incomplete information. I would like to take the people who are responsible for this travesty and walk over their restrained limbs with cleats, repeatedly. I would like to drag them by their hair, step by step, to the chute and dump them down with the soiled linens at the end of my shift. I dream of telling them that their loved ones “numbers” are not compatible with life–and then not explaining to them by what scale I am measuring those numbers. I have visions of giving these morons only half of the data they so desperately seek. I long for the day when I, finally fit and trim,(no thanks to their brochure), that I can walk with them up a mountain, and push them off.
I wanted to know just how many steps I am taking when I am at work-I am on my feet for all 12 hours, most days. This, I thought, will make me feel better, in some vague sense. I toddled off to the store and purchased the cheapo version ($5). It came with a small brochure, which was less than helpful and written in -ahem-challenged English. This pedometer broke quite soon–see? Silly me- I blamed the lack of direction and poor quality on the cheapness of the product. Big mistake.

I purchased another pedometer earlier this week–middle of the menu (budget constraints). Today, I decided to measure my stride and use it.

To that end, I created a puddle on the back deck, walked thru it, and subsequently measured my stride. It is 30 inches (I walk fast–in fact, I tend to “stride”), I don’t know how to convert that to metric. I am sure at one point in my life, I did know, but it escapes me at present. No matter, I think, as I open my somewhat larger and more detailed brochure for this pedometer.

Alas, I am incorrect. This one is no more informative than the last. This one gives precise directions for pulse taking, offers suggestions as to shoe wear and appropriate attire for walking in all weathers. Very well and good in its way, but irrelevant for my purposes. I thumb impatiently to the Stride Table. I need to know how to convert the number of steps walked into mileage.

I come across a table:
Stride length and how many miles per x number of steps. Everything would be great, except for this.
THEY DON’T TELL YOU HOW THEY ARE MEASURING STRIDE LENGTH.

It says “stride length”: 1.00; 1.25; 1.50 etc.

1.0 WHAT? Centimeters, inches, meters, feet, yards, furlongs–WHAT?!?
Is my 30" stride equivalent to 3.00? or is it between 2.50-2.75 (because it is 2ft 6 inches?). Why don’t they give me the measurement?

I leaf thru the rest of the brochure–surely somewhere they will tell me the scale. I find a lovely journal in the last few pages, designed for me to record all those walks I will not be taking. The company that makes this wants to encourage me in my quest for fitness.

How nice of them–there is no phone number to call, no website to visit.

For the love of Pete, does anyone know how to determine length of stride?

Mods-please put me in MPSIMS(if desired)…I have no aptitude for Pittery.

:mad: :frowning: :rolleyes:

2

Looks like you were just born to be mild, eleanorigby. Haven’t the faintest idea how to help with stride measurement, but I can move this to MPSIMS for you.

TVeblen
Pit mod

3

Your stride length is 30 inches and there are 63,360 inches in a mile.
Therefore 2,112 strides would give you a mile.

Google can do help you here. It can act as a calculator and a converter.
(Enter ‘inches in a mile’ for example)

4

I think the problem here is that her pedometer doesn’t tell her what units her “stride length” are in.

More helpful: Do you have a brandname/model for this? What about a picture of it and/or the packaging?

5

When I encounter a product with marginal English and confusing units, I assume they’re metric. After all, the USA is the only country stupid enough to still use the old system, and odds are the fine folks at Gaung-Chow Pedometer Factory #12 have never even heard of the idea of not measuring distances in meters.

If they measure stride in meters, stride of 1.0 is about 39 inches. Given numbers like 1.5 and 2.0, I doubt they’re using meters. At which point I’m stumped with Plan A.

Plan B: The table probably gives the info you need to compute the missing number; it’s just not obvious. If for example, the table includes an entry that at stride 1.0, 4500 steps = 2.1 miles, we can figure it out easily enough. 2.1 miles * 5280 ft / mile = 11088 ft. 11088 ft/ 4500 steps = 2.646 ft/step. 2.464 ft/step * 12 inches/ft = 29.5 inches/step.

if you come up with a number that’s about twice or half the size that makes sense, consider that maybe they mean a “stride” as the distance from let foot-fall to left foot-fall, which in your case is around 60 inches or 5 feet.

As I think about it, I bet you’ll find their stride chart is really in meters, but they’re considering 2 steps as one stride so a typical value for an adult would be 60-80 inches or 1.5 to 2.0 meters.

6

Thank you all very much.

I will look into doing the basic algebra after work tonoc.

At present, I cannot get the friggin’ thing to reset–pushing the “reset” button doesn’t do anything.
Unfortunately, nowhere in the brochure does it state any type of equivalency, nor does it give any unit of measurement.

I DID fiugre how to set the clock in it (yay!) but that’s about it.
Methinks I will use a new system. 12 hour shift=dogs are barking=I walked alot.
Works for me!

:slight_smile:

7

The instructions for my pedometer provide a pretty simple formula for stride length:

  1. Walk 10 steps and measure the distance you cover.
  2. Divide the distance by 10 to get your stride length.

So, for example, if you cover 25 feet in 10 steps, your stride length is 2.5. It looks like you would measure the distance walked in centimeters if you wanted to use the metric setting.

Hope this helps!

8

THis sounds like an Oregon Scientific pedometer. Great product, crappy instructions.

I did the same as ladybug-walked about 25 feet, averaged my stride, converted to meters.

Sam

9

falls over like so: x________x, head spinning wildly with all the math, little numbers floating around her brain

Forget a calculator, now you need to lug around a super-computer to measure your steps…