The Eowyn Challenge, Week 2

[samyazaz]

I walked about 19 miles this week. --Actually, I walked more than that. I forgot my pedometer at home one day this week. After a fair amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth and trying to figure out ways to game the system, I decided that if/when that happens, I'm just going to have to deal with the loss of those steps. I could have manually added the ~4 miles to FitBit's total distance, to compensate for it, but then I'd have to do that forever. And that kind of defeats the purpose of having the pedometer manage all that for me. Suddenly, I'm back to having to keep track of things myself again!

So, I'm not counting those steps. This week's distance brings me to a total of 46.23 miles. I've reached Woody End, a green floor in the wood roofed by boughs of trees, with a view that overlooks the river valley and the lights of Woodhall. In the three weeks I've had my pedometer, I've made it the place where the hobbits made camp at the end of their second night. XD

Also, apparently we are traveling with the elves now! Whoot!

I am really looking forward to crossing the 50-mile threshhold.

Comments

[teprometo.livejournal.com]

God, that is SO much walking. I have a super-sedentary desk job and then I come home and sit on the computer some more. You are GOING PLACES! I'd probably still be at Sam's house or something.

[samyazaz.livejournal.com]

Haaaa. This isn't, like, me deciding I'm going to go out on a 4 mile walk every day. I AM SO NOT THAT DISCIPLINED. Pretty much all of my walking is walking that happens during the course of my work at my medical assisting externship. There's lots of walking with that job. Lots. Looooots.

I am pretty much completely sedentary when I'm not at work. On the weekends I tend to get maaaaaybe one or two thousand steps a day, and I guarantee 75% of that is me getting up and walking into the kitchen to make more tea.

It is so much walking. It really is. My feet and legs are starting to get a little bit used to it, but the first few weeks, I pretty much limped out to my car at the end of every day. My knees hated me. My quads hated me. My ankles hated me.

It's probably a very good thing that I'm going into a field that requires me to be active, because I am crap at making myself do it otherwise. WHY WOULD I GO OUTSIDE WHEN THE INTERNET IS RIGHT HERE?

[sophinisba]

I haven't been at my normal work schedule the last couple weeks so I actually have been going out for walks more. Sometimes it's hard to get myself out the door but it's been lovely listening to podcasts and podfics and Les Miserables and getting to know my neighborhood a little better.

I would be so pissed if I left my pedometer at home for a day. I admire your grace in giving up those 4 miles!

[samyazaz.livejournal.com]

Oh, trust me, it's not grace. I was super pissed when I realized I'd forgotten it. There was definitely some swearing and some foot stomping. I had just gotten to work, and if there'd been any way to go back home and get it without being horrifically late, I would have.

Then I wondered if it would be possible to just manually add the steps in later. Turns out you can add an activity and it'll add those steps to the day's count, but it won't add them to any of the lifetime counts, which is what I'm using to keep track of my distance. Then I thought maybe I would just game the system by shaking the fitbit enough to add an extra 2000 steps a day, and that way make up my 10k over the course of the week. But I quickly realized that that would have taken forever, and I was too lazy for that. So that pretty much left giving up that day's steps, or keeping track of the days I'd missed and manually adding those to the total forever. I know myself well enough to (grudgingly) acknowledge that that way lies failure. It was the difficulty of keeping track of everything myself that made me give up on this challenge every other time I've tried it over the past five years.

What sort of neighborhood do you live in? I wish we had awesome stuff to discover here, but it's a bedroom community, so it's just houses, houses, houses. I really like listening to podcasts or awesome music when I go out for a walk, too. Something to keep my brain occupied. (And ooh, Les Mis! <3 Which version are you listening to? I tend to favor the 10th anniversary concert soundtrack, but that's probably because that was my first introduction to it, so it's stuck with me.) I also really love Zombies, Run! for entertainment and motivation to get my butt out the door. It's like a radio play sort of thing -- there's episodes and stories, interspersed with your own music. So cool.

I'm definitely going to have to start making an effort to get my butt out of the house and on walks more soon. I've only got about three and a half days left at my externship, and then it's likely to be back to sedentary life on the couch until I find myself a job. >_< As an alternative, though, I've been thinking that I might need to work on just moving more throughout the day, instead of one big push to go on an Actual Walk. What I really need to make sure I keep is the stamina to be able to walk and be on my feet all day long, so I'm thinking I might go for something like, "Walk around for five minutes every hour" or "Walk around the house during commercial breaks" or something. At least having the pedometer keeping track of it all should be pretty good motivation to not just slide back into my lazy, sedentary ways. :)