Confused With My Digital Pedometer

[jamesndawson]

I have a Sportline digital pedometer.

I'm very dense about setting anything electronic and have usually avoid it as much as possible. I've tried to read the instructions several times and it just doesn't sink in very well.

But what I'm getting from it, is that this pedometer can't be set to just measure miles walked, but rather, one sets a goal to be walked and it displays the percentage of that goal. But that's not what I want. I just want something to measure how far I've walked.

Has anybody else used this brand of pedometer or any like it? Is it impossible to bypass the "goal" setting and just set it to measure distance, and have it displayed as distance, not percentage?

I looked around for a mechanical pedometer on the Net and am thinking of just getting one of those, but I don't want to pay too much for one. I'm not interested in a "collectible". I've seen pedometers at the dollar store. I wonder if they might measure just straight distance, not goal-percentage.

[jamesndawson]

I bought a pedometer at the dollar store a couple weeks ago and just tried it out today. It's supremely simple. Just press a button to zero it, clip it on your hip somewhere (I use my change pocket) and start walking. I measured my stride by walking 20 steps, measuring the distance with a measuring tape and dividing by 20, to get my average stride length. The pedometer measures steps. With that raw data it's: TOTAL STEPS x STRIDE LENGTH (IN INCHES) DIVIDED BY 12 (INCHES PER FOOT) DIVIDED BY 5,280 FEET PER MILE EQUALS MILES WALKED. (Hope I got that right.)

I walked my running route which I'd already measured by my truck odometer at a little under 3.0, and got 2.81, so I'm satisfied it's reasonably accurate.

Unfortunately, I've been lazy lately and haven't been running as often as I should be, but I'm going to try to get back to it, starting with a planned walk-run.