In April 2009 I bought a bicycle so I could bike to work and get some exercise. At roughly the same time I started keeping track of how many miles I walked and biked, and wondered how long it will take me to get to 1000 miles. Today I know: I just logged my 1000th mile!
To put that distance in perspective, it is roughly equivalent of driving from Toronto, Ontario to Halifax, Nova Scotia, or Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Disney World in Orlando, Florida. Not bad for a guy who 15 months ago barely left the couch.
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| My 1000th mile logged in at work. |
So what does this mean exactly? At work we have a website where we can track how much exercise we get individually, and how much we get as a company. I used this site to track my miles. I also followed these guidelines:
- I measured all distances using my trail GPS unit, and entered the distance into the website exactly as shown on the device. No rounding or manipulation of any kind. After a while I stopped measuring my common routes, but any new routes were measured using a GPS unit. (semi-interesting fact: I walk 2.56 miles to mow my lawn).
- When recording distances I did not differentiate between walking and biking, nor did I consider the difficulty of terrain. Walking on the sidewalk counted just the same as walking on a mountain trail, as did biking to work on the road. I only cared about the distance travelled.
- For a trip to count I must have travelled a distance of at least 1 mile. The one exception to this was when I go geocaching, in which case I added up distances over 0.2 miles and only logged if the days total was greater than one mile. I didn't use this exception much, and when I did the totals were usually much more than a mile.
Despite having to overcome some difficulties, like a sprained ankle that sidelined me for 6 weeks, I had a lot of fun reaching this goal, and I plan on continuing walking and biking in the future. I do need a new goal though. I am thinking of using the distance across Canada from Halifax to Vancouver - 3600 miles - as a new target. It has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?
