A Mile (or so) In My Shoes

There are two very important things I should tell you right here and now:

1.  I am obsessed to a certain degree with exactitude where my times and distances are concerned.

2.  This is my father's fault.

The man has a spreadsheet for everything. Somewhere in his house are all the records from all his runs, back in the days when he ran nearly every day. When he was recuperating from the stroke he had 20 years ago and was having to learn to walk again, and then having to build up endurance literally a foot at a time, he recorded the distance he traveled on the driveway of his home every day -- and logged it into an Excel Spreadsheet. Seeing proof in black and white of your progress is a tremendous motivator.

When I first started out walking regularly for exercise I would drive to Vaughn Road Park (less than 2 miles from my house, and to which I now walk), and the only way I tracked my progress was by how many laps of that .6 mile track I covered. I was relying on the signs in the park that measure the distance, you understand.

At some point during those early days, I invested in a pedometer, and after my husband helped me calibrate it (which is the most important -- and easiest -- part of the process) I checked it out by heading to the park and doing a loop. I about cried when the pedometer read .57 miles. 

I cannot tell you the laughter that ensued when I shared with my online support group at Weight Watchers how annoyed I was that I would have to do the calibration all over again. I came to my senses, realized that I was going to have to let go of at least a measure of my obsession, and get on with it.

This is the Omron HJ-112.
There is nothing overly fancy about it, but it does what it is supposed to do. Accurately. You need one. You will thank me for telling you this. They've added a calories burned field since I bought mine. Hmmm.....  You might shop around for this, though. Manufacturer's sites are almost never the best way to buy anything, seems to me.

Fast forward a little bit to the day my son finally talked me into buying an iPhone, which led to a new hobby: downloading GPS apps! I've used several, but my favorite right now is this one:

What I love about it is that I have several different playlists on my iPhone -- most not for exercising. I have a playlist for when I want to go a bit faster, and one for longer walks where my pace is more moderate but I still like a little speed spurt. All other apps I had tried would only shuffle using your ENTIRE iPod library. This one allows you to choose a playlist and shuffle the music only with it. (We'll talk about the music/no music while exercising debate some other time.)

What I do not love about this is that there is no "walk" option for reporting updates to social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), and I found myself feeling like I had to explain all the time that no, I didn't RUN 5 miles. Okay, so that isn't really a major problem, but it's a little irksome. 

And I discovered this week yet another drawback to it -- more substantial this time.

Unless you work for military intelligence or the Secret Service, or can afford a gazillion dollar personal GPS, it is probably never going to be entirely accurate. That's just a given. I'm not talking big variances, but just enough so that my Distance Calculation Zen wasn't disturbed. This week, though, there was considerable fog and cloud cover one morning, and the GPS dropped a fairly good portion of my walk -- like almost the entire loop of Vaughn Road Park. That's cool -- other apps I had used would allow you to edit your map online if that happened -- but not Nike. I don't like guessing. 

The next morning, I strapped on my Omron, and re-walked that exact route with no "intervals/jogs" since the pedometer is not calibrated for the shorter stride those necessitate for me. Problem solved, but it wasn't exactly the easiest solution. 

The most fun thing about this app, though, is a feature called "Cheers." You can post to your social media outlets that you are heading out on a run, and when people hit the like button or comment you hear, through your iPhone, cheers from a crowd! It really was fun, but it's a feature I decided not to use for each walk, reserving it now only for those LONG treks where it's nice to have something to break the monotony.

That's probably enough about all of this for today. Lots of folks just drive their cars to measure distance, and some folks just measure time, and some just get out there and could care less about either. There is no wrong approach to this.

***

WALKS THIS WEEK

Monday: 4.63 miles

Time: 1:08:49

Pace:14.52 minute mile 

Tuesday: 5.55 miles

Time:  1:24:41

Pace: 15.15 minute mile

Wednesday: 3.84 miles (intervals)

Time: 54:13

Pace: 14.07 minute mile

Thursday: 3.84 miles

Time: 57.01 

Pace: 14.51 minute mile

Friday: Day off in preparation for distance walk tomorrow.