Missive #242

On 31 August 2006 I started what I named ‘My Walking Project’— daily walks with the intent of improving my health and maybe loose some weight.

I bought a cheap pedometer that would tell me how far I had walked but when walking the same route I was getting vastly different step counts and distances. Therefore, after about three months I bought a Garmin 10 GPS watch that gave me consistent distance reading for the same route. I used that watch for maybe 5-6 years until it began to fail and then bought a Garmin 35 which I used until early in 2024. When that watch was acting like it was going to give me problems I bought a Polar Pacer watch and after considerable tribulations have a working system for recording my walk distances plus heart rate (which has become something I’m now focusing on as a predictor for psoriasis flares).

The early years of the Walking Project were sort of off and on. I walked most days but there were some periods of no walks at all when I was doing various trips. Starting on 30 November 2009 when I began posting daily as the Peregrinating GraBerd I was also doing daily walks; sometime only one but usually two or three and doing nearly five miles a day.

Then stating 22 October 2011 I got a walking partner – Patches. From that time until now I have done almost every walk almost every day with a walking partner be that Patches or Erik. Patches probably walked 16-17,000 miles with me. Erik has now been with me for 3,200 miles; I hope he outpaces Patches and I hope I’m with him.

I don’t know when I set a goal for my walks or why I chose the goal that I did. However, at some time and for some reason I decided that I would walk the circumference of the earth. That is 24,901.4 miles or using my rather short stride something over 60,000,000 steps. I accomplished that goal on 14 March 2024 which has taken me ONLY about 17 years. HA

The walking has now become a habit although there are days that I don’t want to get up and go out there. That is why Patches and Erik have been so good for me. There was also the ‘goal’ that was an  incentive. I’ll keep walking because it is now a habit and I do have Erik but need a new goal and have decided that I’ll walk the Interstate Highways.

I couldn’t visualize my circumference walk on a map but will get added  incentive by showing my distances along the Interstates on Google Maps. I never disclosed my circumference walking goal before but plan on providing Interstate walking updates periodically as added incentive to keep on keeping on.