Well, let me begin this blog post by saying if you don’t want to read this I totally understand. It IS a bit boring, and I’m sure everyone is just about so done hearing about my walking. But, if you can bring yourself to it, I do hope you finish this blog. I suspect this is the last post of 2015, and I’m hoping that in 2016 my blogs will have a little less to do with the walking!
This blog serves as a confession. My confession to you, my readers.
You see, the other day, I trumpeted my accomplishment of walking over 1,700 miles in 2015. What I haven’t told any of you (because frankly, I hadn’t thought it important until this week) is those 1,700 miles include every step of every day. That means if I got up at 1:00 am and walked the 10 steps to the bathroom, those steps are included in those 1,700 miles. Those are not 1,700 miles of dedicated point a to point b walking. Does it matter? Perhaps to you my reader it does. It doesn’t to me. I have participated, sometimes assiduously, and sometimes not so assiduously, in the “10,000 Step Program”. This program encourages people to aim for a daily step program of, you guessed it, 10,000 steps, which for the average person would be about 5 miles.
That’s my first confession. My 1,700 miles are the totality of my walking each and every day.
My second confession is that I probably have not, and probably will not, make it to 1,700 miles in 2015. You see, we calculate our steps per mile, or our pace, by counting our steps over a given distance of 1 or 2 miles, then divide those steps by the miles we walked. The average person walks 2000 steps per mile. I have a long stride, so my pace is less than 2000. And, if I’m trying to beat a certain time, for instance on my morning walks I sometimes try to get as close to a 15 minute mile as possible, then my pace will be even less, whereas if I’m strolling through the neighborhood, my pace will be greater.
Back in late October, when the morning temperatures were, to say the least, delightful, I walked faster. Several times in October I came very close to walking 15 minute miles. It was during that time that I calculated the pace that I used to determine my overall mileage for 2015. At that time, my pace was 1,753 steps per mile.
But those days were few. I generally average between 16 minutes a mile and 16 and a half, sometimes even 17 minutes per mile.
My pedometer, a Fitbit Surge (don’t buy one, I am not overly pleased with it) allows me to record my total steps per day, then tells me how far I walked based on a pace that I have preconfigured. But it also allows me to record “Exercises” which can include hikes and walks. When I’m recording those, it counts my steps, and it tracks my position by GPS, so that at the end of the exercise, it can tell me pretty close to how far I have walked. I began recording those when I discovered the function back on August 6, 2015.
I meticulously record all this data on a spreadsheet, AND in a SQL Database. So this morning, I started playing with the data, and doing some calculations. And here’s what I came up with:
My data for 2015 is crap. Because I wasn’t consistent with values (especially pace) there is truly no way to go back and determine how far I walked or my pace this past year. I do know that I walked something less than 1,700 miles. But I probably walked something more than 1,600 miles. I know that my pace throughout the day is more than 1,753 steps, but it’s probably less than 2,000 steps.
In dedicated walking and hiking since August 6, 2015, I have walked 168.5 miles, with an average pace of 1,854 steps per mile. I can extrapolate that I probably walked around 280 miles this past year, but that is within a lose “give-or-take” of 25% I think.
These data really put a damper on my ego this late in the year!
So what does all this mean for my goals for 2016? I will continue to faithfully record every step I take every day. And I will faithfully record every step/mile of each dedicated walk and hike I take. But, here is the substantive goal for 2016:
500 miles of dedicated walking and hiking. This includes my morning walks around the park, and my periodic hikes up in the local mountains. It includes the Bataan Memorial, and even my stated goal of walking around the city of Las Cruces in 3 days.
In addition, I will continue to shoot for that 1,900 miles for 2016. Since for 2015 I used a pace of 1,753 steps, I will use the same pace to calculate those 1,900 miles.
And if you actually READ all of that, you are to be commended! I do appreciate that you committed to reading my blog. I promise that, at the very least, my next post will not be all about walking! (I would like to say it won’t include walking at all, but I’m not sure I can live up to THAT promise!)
On The Road II 