Incorrect mileage on elliptical?

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ilike2dance
ilike2dance Posts: 35 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Hello! I have a nordictrack e5.7 elliptical that both my mom and I use. However, the mileage always seems to be WAY too low. For a 45 minute workout (going at a pretty decent pace) it says I've only gone 1 mile! Back at college, when I do the exact same workout on the elliptical there ( all the machines there are the life fitness brand) I get about 4-5 miles which seems much more reasonable. I checked the usage history for the nordic track elliptical and it said 575 miles and 80 hours. This equals about 7 miles per hour which seems much more reasonable than what the machine tells me while I am working out. Has anyone else experienced this? Anyone know how to fix it? For now I might just use the usage history for a rough estimate (it rounds to whole numbers) but I like to track my workouts (I don't track them on MFP that often but on a separate excel spreadsheet I record mileage, time, average speed, fastest mile, etc for running, biking, and the elliptical) and I need accurate data for that. Can anyone help? I've gone through the manual and website but it wasn't very helpful!

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  • DavPul
    DavPul Posts: 61,406 Member
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    It's an elliptical. You aren't going ANY miles. It's a made up number. Just do your time and use PE to make your best guess as to if you have the resistance and speed set about the same as the other machine.
  • brower47
    brower47 Posts: 16,356 Member
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    It's an elliptical. You aren't going ANY miles. It's a made up number. Just do your time and use PE to make your best guess as to if you have the resistance and speed set about the same as the other machine.

    Yeah, it's a stationary machine. At least a stationary bike is based on something that actually moves, there's nothing that really moves that the elliptical is based on. Hence it's all just made up. Do your minutes and be happy with your workout.
  • fivethreeone
    fivethreeone Posts: 8,196 Member
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    "More reasonable"?? I'm sorry, average human walking speed is 3mph

    Ain't no way you "went" 4-5 miles in 45 minutes. That's equivalent to running 9 minute miles the whole time without rest.
  • ilike2dance
    ilike2dance Posts: 35 Member
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    Ya I was just curious as to why there was such a big discrepancy because from what I understand it's calculated based on the stride of the machine (around 60,000 inches in a mile; 20 inch stride, calculate miles from this). I was just wondering how to best track it for the popular monthly mile challenges because I can't run outside right now since I live in Texas and it's too hot to run outside, and I still have a few more weeks until I'm back at college with access to the gym! Thanks for the feedback!
  • tinatastic77
    tinatastic77 Posts: 1 Member
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    I typically follow interval training on the eliptical and tonight I finished 5 miles in an hour. That was with several cool downs and an average heart rate of 155 and a high of 175.

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