Elliptical Distance for Dummies

Typical elliptical console

We've noticed many a time over the life of the Antisocial Network that some freelance contributors to the erstwhile eHow.com would happily answer any question, no matter how stupid or how little they happened to know about the topic. The most... interesting? of the posts are those written by clueless freelancers to answer questions that are just plain dumb. Today's DotD nominee checks both boxes: meet Tanya May and the way she addressed "How to Convert Distance to Miles for a Proform Elliptical" for SportsRec.com.

The staffer who ran across this particular post was gobsmacked by the question. Many a staffer has used a Proform elliptical at one time or another, and every one of them distinctly remembers that the console reported the distance. That left us with only two possible approaches to the question: either the OQ couldn't figure out what "distance" meant on the console readout or, more likely, the OQ wanted to know how to change the display from metric units (km) to imperial units (miles). May, however, decided that the OQ had no access to a distance readout...
...but did have access to a step count. And the owner's manual. Duh. To that end, Tanya tried to tell her readers that,

"Proform elliptical trainers display distance as a measurement of revolutions per minute..."

Actually an elliptical, regardless of brand, will display strides per minute, not revolutions; and will perform a simultaneous calculation (actually an estimate) of distance traveled. In other words, there's no reason to...

"Measure the wheel from edge to edge across the center to determine the diameter of the wheel in inches..."

...which is a damned good thing, given that the flywheel of an elliptical is typically in a housing for the sake of safety. To further botch her instructions, May then told her readers to,

"Divide 5,280 (the number of feet in a mile) by either the stride length or circumference of the wheel in feet. The result indicates the distance you travel with each revolution of the wheel..."

...except that the flywheel doesn't complete a revolution with each stride. Once she gets that bushwa out of the way, Tanya's instruction to

"...multiply the total revolutions you see on the Proform elliptical's display by the stride length or wheel circumference to calculate the total miles..."

...is probably OK, although people around here are aware that the number is more of an estimate. Be that as it may, we suspect that May completely missed the point. Instead, the OQ should have gone into the machine's setup and toggled between kilometers and miles. Sheesh: and you wondered why we thought Tanya qualified for Dumbass of the Day? Now you know.

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