[_gatecrasher_]

Last night my BF and I were watching Olive running away. I'm a marathon runner so I'm obsessed with knowing the distance and statistics behind each of my own runs. I started wondering exactly what distances and at what speed she logs on her Cake Walk Supreme each night.

This morning I was doing some maintenance on my mountain bike and realized that we should use a bike computer! For those of you unfamiliar, a bike computer has a sensor that is stuck to one of the wheels and then some minor wiring and battery-operated computer that logs cadence, distance, calories burned, etc. We're going to pick up a cheap one at the store and will hook it up. I'll just have to play around with the settings to ensure that it's tracking the distance based on wheel circumference/rotation. I will keep everyone updated on this experiment. However, has anyone else done anything like this?

 

[lane_m]

I have recently installed a cycling computer on both my hedgies wheels. I bought them at Wal-Mart for about $19.00 each

[attachment=0:3sq4mhfa]lunapic-124974802864300-6.jpg[/attachment:3sq4mhfa]

I have learned that my hedgies run between 3 and 3 1/2 hours each night. In this time they cover a distance of 5 - 7 kilometers (sorry, I'm in Canada, but I think that is about 3 - 4 miles). They have an average speed of about 2-3 km an hour. The max speed is unreliable, because when a hedgie changes direction it seems to the cycling computer that they made the wheel go all the way around in a very short time. So it misreads a max speed of 15 - 18 km an hour. I think it is more like 6 km an hour.

Also, I have noticed that if they have an extra long playpen session (more than 1 hour) they spend less time on their wheel.

I found that this post was very helpful when I set mine up:
http://hedgehogcentral.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1568&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=computer

Good luck! It can be a bit trying setting it up, but I think it is very valuable information

 

[LizardGirl]

Yup, I've known several people who have done this. Make sure you get one that will still record when the wheel is going "backwards", since hedgies often switch directions.

 

[gyaku]

I think that would be the hardest thing with a spedometer. I tried putting one to my home made wheel it didn't read too well, I only paid $7 at Walmart

 

[_gatecrasher_]

Awesome! Thanks everyone!

Fortunately, Olive ONLY runs in one direction. She absolutely refuses to run in the opposite direction. I was actually looking at the $20 one at Walmart. Thanks for the suggestion!