Walking Progress

This isn't including my walk yesterday (since I'm writing this blog post almost a week ago) or my walk this morning either, but I thought I'd share a little update on how my daily walking is going.

Last week I hit a lifetime achievement on my Fitbit; Penguin March! That is, since getting my Fitbit I'd walked 70 miles which is the same distance that a King Penguin will walk. I'm not counting my everyday walking miles towards my target of walking the 458 miles from Hobbiton to Rivendell; so by last Thursday I'd walked roughly 45 miles. All the same, it's nice to see the way that they're adding up.

My main goal that I'm working towards on the Fitbit is the number of floors climbed. Every time I go up a hill or a staircase the Fitbit registers it. My daily target is set at ten but I regularly manage to get twenty or more. This is mainly because my current dog walking route involves walking down (and then up) a hill which is roughly equal to eight flights of stairs. This coupled with my regular up and down stairs trips at home means that I often hit my flight's climbed target before I even leave for work.

I should probably up that target really, but at the moment I quite like the fact that I've got one target I'll definitely hit every day.

My target number of steps per day is set at 10,000 though I only really get this at weekends (and the last couple of Sundays I've been really lazy). Looking at my results, I can get roughly 7,000 steps in on an average work day. The mornings are getting lighter, as are the evenings, so I'm hoping I'll be able to get out for longer walks with the dog so I'm at least hitting 7,000 steps per day.

In terms of my progress through Middle-earth, I'm now onto Day Three of the Hobbits' journey. If I can keep going at two Hobbit days per month I'll get through the whole walk before the end of the year. I've been trying to average 1.2 miles per day and I've managed it every day, bar two (when it was too icy to walk anywhere properly and when heavy winds meant it was highly likely I'd get bopped on the head by a tree if I went out). When I last checked I've been achieving 1.6 miles per day, so I'm ahead of target.

Now I'm trying to push myself up to 1.5 miles per day and I'd like to get to the point, possibly around April, where I can do two miles a day. I don't think I'll go any further than that because I'm not aiming to run marathons or anything, just walk a little bit more.


And so far I'm doing pretty well.