I'm sure, eventually, the novelty of having a GPS will wear off, but for quite some time I've been wondering exactly how far it is from my house to my 'office' in the town centre and how long it takes me. It turns out it's very almost exactly one kilometer from door to door. Today I walked at pace and did it in slightly over nine minutes, when I thought I had it down to about eight. I need to leave a couple of minutes earlier for work!
I've decided to switch the units on the GPS to metric instead of the standard imperial miles we tend to use here. This is mainly because all our maps are metric and when it comes to smaller distances I'm much more comfortable with metres than fractions of a mile, yards and feet. In fact, if I could I'd display both but the unit won't let me. I'll still be converting the kilometers to miles for the blog and generally so I can get an idea of how far I've done. The next step is to learn how to record and follow tracks, which seems pretty simple. Depending on the weather and if I'm free, I might go out for five or six miles, or more, once I finish work.
There we have it, then. If I walk to work and back every day I'll add 10km, 6.2 miles to my weekly total with the return journey taking in a fairly substantial hill. That's 520km, 323 miles per year! Working where I do it's too easy to get a ride home, but I'd like to make the effort to walk as much as possible. Not that I'll hopefully be working here for much longer and I'll be moving into a much more active job, but for the time being it's important to recognise the benefit of walking to work and back.
03 March 2010
01 March 2010
Very local walk, 1.1 mile
This was a quick test walk for my new old Garmin eTrex GPS unit. It's actually the one my brothers and I bought our parents for Christmas a few years back. I've wanted a GPS for ages, since before I started walking but especially since I started putting miles under my belt.
A 1.1 mile walk wouldn't normally be worth noting here but for two things: the unit had 3940.51 miles on the total odometer - noted here so I can check in future how many miles I've covered since getting it, and that my average walking speed on that short walk was a cracking 4.1mph which is considerably faster than I thought I walked. It was perhaps a touch above my normal flat concrete walking pace just because I was aware I wanted to record my best speed, but it makes me think I'll post better average speeds when walking on my own than when walking with my folks. This isn't an insult by any means - walks with my parents have many more hills and occasional dawdles and are slightly more leisurely than my own constant stomps around the local area, so I reckon it'll be interesting to get out and do five miles or so this week to give the unit its first good workout in my control.
A 1.1 mile walk wouldn't normally be worth noting here but for two things: the unit had 3940.51 miles on the total odometer - noted here so I can check in future how many miles I've covered since getting it, and that my average walking speed on that short walk was a cracking 4.1mph which is considerably faster than I thought I walked. It was perhaps a touch above my normal flat concrete walking pace just because I was aware I wanted to record my best speed, but it makes me think I'll post better average speeds when walking on my own than when walking with my folks. This isn't an insult by any means - walks with my parents have many more hills and occasional dawdles and are slightly more leisurely than my own constant stomps around the local area, so I reckon it'll be interesting to get out and do five miles or so this week to give the unit its first good workout in my control.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)