Treadmill with incline

[billman]

This is interesting.  I've been trying to get my stride length correct when using my treadmill.  I've been dividing my treadmill distance by the number of steps logged by my Surge.  

The first observation (which I made in another thread) is that the Surge ALWAYS uses my walking stride length to calculate distance - I have no idea when or how the running stride length is used by my Surge to calculate distance.

But here's the interesting thing:  When I use the treadmill with an incline of 5 degrees, my stride length calculates to a ridiculous 3.5' - this is a consistent measurement and is way wrong.  When I use the treadmill with no incline, my stride length calculates to a 2.7' - which is totally reasonable for me (6' tall male).  All these measurements are make at a 3.5 mph pace.

This tells me that the Surge is not accurately tracking my steps when the treadmill is inclined.  Has anyone had any experience with treadmill incline mismeasurements, or got any insights into this?  

Or ... I'd also been using wrist weights .... how much would wrist weights and swinging my arms affect the step count?  (I will do that experiment: incline with no wrist weights.)

[billman]

Bumping this question/concern up the list.  I just did a test today: 5% incline, no wrist weights, just normal arm swinging motion.  My treadmill distance was 1.85 miles in 32 minutes at a pace of 3.5 mph, and my Surge tracked 2800 steps for a (ridiculous) stride length of 3.49 ft.  (The distince reported on the Surge was .98 miles, which agrees with my walking stride length of 1.8 ft/stride.)

Conclusion:  The Surge does not track step count properly on inclines.