Monday 25 July 2011

Monday, Monday..

A good enough day to start I feel so here we are.

I have decided to combine walking with 'cycling'.  When I say 'cycling' I mean this:
OK so I wrote about why I have this and not an actual bike here.  So currently my plan is going something like this....

No, I am not going for a Proclaimers style make over but I am wondering if between now and the Olympics I can walk 500 miles.  Since I am doing that, I am wondering if I can cycle another 500 for good measure.  However as easy as it is for me to stick the DS pedometer in my pocket and convert the kilometres to miles (better go dig that out tonight actually) the 'cycle' thing tells me time, calories burnt and how many revolutions the pedals have done.
I need to figure out a way to convert that into miles, any ideas?

4 comments:

  1. That's a good question, but a tricky one, since there are a lot of assumptions one has to make. The important number from the computer is number of revolutions, because that is the one which would be directly related to distance (time is dependent on both speed and distance, and calories on effort and distance).

    Since we know the revolutions, we need to know how far you travel per revolution. The thing is, on a real bike, this is a function of the number of revolutions multiplied by the circumference of the wheel - and you don't have a wheel ;)

    So how big is the average bike wheel? Having a quick look at http://www.ctc.org.uk/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=3802 it looks like somewhere just shy of 2 metres would be about average. For the sake of an easy life, we'll say 1.8 metres, because that's 6 feet (and we want to work in Imperial for 500 miles).

    So - you travel 6 feet per revolution, and as any fule kno, 6 feet = 2 yards, and there are 1760 yards in a mile (I am a child of the metric generation and had to look that up). So 1760/2 = 880 - you will travel 1 mile for every 880 revolutions.

    HTH!

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  2. That is brilliant thank you :)
    I will work on the basis on 1 mile to every 880 revs and go from there.

    I am so glad you could work all that out, I did look but it was all making my brain bleed!

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  3. I had thought of Phil's theory but fell down at the "oh but we don't have a wheel" point.
    This is why I only have an Arts degree :(

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  4. There is no such thing as 'only' an arts degree young lady!
    Fee Hutch BA (hons) Media Studies & Professional Writing
    :-)

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