WALK, FORREST, WALK!
So remember back on June 1st when I made that running total dynamic bar thing that compared how my yearly mileage totals accumulated for each year I’ve lived in Calgary? (This thing?)
Well, I updated it to include 2020 now.
I didn’t even really consider trying to beat 2017’s mileage until about half way through the year. Then it was a push to make it happen – which it did at the very start of November.
Kinda cool!
Walking 2020
Happy New Year!
As always, January 1st is dedicated to reviewing last year’s walking mileage. So let’s get to it! But before we do, a quick disclaimer: I am including my running mileage in all of these totals, too, but I’m just going to refer to everything as walking mileage because it’s easier.
K? K.
ONWARD!
Here are my walking stats for January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2020.
Total number of walks: 347
Total mileage: 5,160
Total number of steps: 11,687,919
Total calories burned: 355,903
Total walking time (minutes): 78,727.87 [that’s about 54.67 days]
Average speed (mph) per walk: 3.80
5,160 miles is approximately the great circle distance between Juneau, AK and Barcelona, Spain or between Naples, Italy and Cape Town, South Africa.
And for anyone who’s keeping track (probably no one), yes, this is a new yearly mileage record. I beat 2017’s record of 5,100 by 60 miles, which isn’t a fantastic jump in distance or anything, but it is a new record.
So yay!
SUCK IT, DOUBTERS
I just surpassed 5,000 walking miles for the year, and I did it one day sooner than I did in 2007, the last (and only) time I hit 5,000 walking miles.
So for everyone who didn’t think I could do it again, take THAT!
I’m also going to likely beat 2007’s total mileage of 5,100, too.
Ha.
Walkie Talkie
Hey NERDS, so up until this point, I’ve walked 4,585.06 miles. At this same time in 2017 (my record walking year), I’d walked 4,573.77 miles. So that means (unless I royally screw up) I’m on pace to beat 2017’s distance of 5,100 miles.
YESSSSSSSSSSS.
(I live for this crap, sorry.)
Around the World in 2,206 Days
Today, I hit a huge walking milestone: since my first walk in Calgary on September 8, 2014, I have now walked a total of 24,901.46 miles. That is equivalent to the circumference of the earth at the equator!
As always, here are some stats:
- Total number of walks: 1,938
- Total steps: 56,171,859
- Total time spent walking: 383,048.87 minutes, or 6,384.15 hours, or 266.00 days
- Average walking distance (when averaged across the 1,938 walks): 12.849 miles
- Average walking distance (if I had spaced out the distance over every single day): 11.29 miles
So that’s pretty cool, eh?
Boxplot of walk distances by year:
Boxplot of walk distances by month:
Boxplot of walk distances by day of the week:
(As if anyone cares)
Let’s start another trip around the world tomorrow!
ALRIGHT BITCHES, let’s do a little math.
So I want to try to get another 5,000+ miles this year, because nobody thinks I can do it.
I shall do it.
2017 was the year of exactly 5,100 miles, so let’s compare this year’s pace with 2017’s pace to see what I’d need to do to get to at least 5,000 miles this year.
Through August 15, 2017, I had gone 3,298.9 miles in the year (I was also like a week out from that stupid knee/leg injury thing that slowed me down so much but DID NOT PREVENT ME FROM REACHING MY MILEAGE GOAL HOHOHOHOHOHO)
Through August 15, 2020, I’ve gone 3,164.2 miles in the year.
That means I’m behind pace by 134.7 miles. BUT, like I said, in 2017 I actually had gone 5,100 miles instead of just 5,000. So discounting those last 100 miles puts me only 34.7 miles behind pace.
Not bad.
HOKAY, so let’s just focus on this year, then. 5000 minus 3164.2 gives me another 1,835.8 miles that I’ve got to walk this year. There are 19 weeks (plus a few extra days) left in the year. That breaks down to about 96 miles a week (discounting those last few days), or an average of about 16.1 miles per day six days a week for the rest of the year.
Could I do that?
I absolutely could.
So if I did exactly 16 miles six days a week for the next 19 weeks, that would get me an additional 1,824, which would leave me with an additional 11.8 miles to do over those last few days of the year. Usually I have troubles getting my full six days per week at the end of the year due to travel, but HAHAHAHA THAT’S NOT HAPPENING THIS YEAR, so this should be an issue.
I could totally do it again, guys.
I’m going to do it again.
More Walking Nonsense
Guys, I am super close to a very big walking goal. Not my 5,000 miles this year (I’ve still got a ways to go for that!), but a walking goal I’ve had since I started working towards when I first moved up here. I suspect I’ll hit it within the next month and a half or so, so expect a big blog post about it then!
But for now…VAGUE GOAL POSTING IS VAGUE
The Walking: Halfway Through the Year
What is UP, my nerdy turds?
Tomorrow is a “let’s start a brand new pair of Kinvaras” day, which means tonight I’ve downloaded all my walking data for the current set of shoes so that I can add it to the Excel file containing all my walking data since I moved to Calgary in 2014.
I feel like I’ve been more consistent than ever with my “15 miles a day” thing, so I was curious to see how this year compared, so far, with 2017 (my record walking year).
In 2017, I had walked a cumulative total of 2433.19 miles by June 30.
This year, I’ve walked a cumulative total of 2545.84 miles by June 30.
…I’m ahead of 2017’s pace? Not only that, but I’m more than halfway to a cumulative total of 5,000 miles by the middle of the year?
WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?
Well, now I need to try for it again. I need to try for another 5,000+ mile year. Not only would it be cool to have that total again, but it would be a good way to show everyone who has doubted my ability to repeat 2017’s walking distance that 2017 was not a fluke.
BRING IT ON!
I Made a Doodad That Ended Up Being Much Less Interesting Than I Thought It Would Be But Whatever
Hi.
So we all know I love walking, right? And stats. I love stats.
So I often like to put those two things together.
One thing I’ve been wanting to do is make one of those “racing totals” visuals where I see how quickly my mileage racks up for each year I’ve been walking up here in Calgary. I can do static visuals fine in something like R, but animated visuals are something that I’ve never really done on my own, so I’ve never been able to make such a visual.
However, I found an editable template of one on Flourish so I decided to give it a try.
The following visual shows my cumulative walking mileage for 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 as the year progresses from January 1 to December 31. The year 2014 was excluded because I only moved to Calgary in September of 2014, and the year 2020 was excluded because we’re only in June.
Pretty boring. More boring than I thought it’d be, actually. I thought 2017, 2018, and 2019 would at least skip around in largest total until, like, March or something. But nope. Only through January.
Haha, I like how 2019 was like, “I’m gonna catch you, 2017!” and then July happened.
(I only walked 2,523 miles in 2015 what the hell was wrong with me)
Walking 2019
Happy New Year! Happy New Decade! Let’s do the annual madness that is my review of last year’s walking stats.
Here they are for January 1, 2019 to December 31, 2019.
Total number of walks: 348
Total mileage: 4,836.81
Total number of steps: 11,813,295
Total calories burned: 304,776
Total walking time (minutes): 80,420.25 [that’s about 55.84 days]
Average speed (mph) per walk: 3.64
4,836.81 miles is approximately the great circle distance between Seattle, WA and London, England or between Constantine, Algeria and Cape Town, South Africa.
Let’s do as well (or better!) this year.
20,000 Miles!
Hello, nerd bombs! To everyone’s shock, today will be a walking-related blog.
Why? Because counting today’s walk, I have walked a total of 20,000 miles since living in Calgary!
Here are some stats (as always, haha):
Total walks: 1,610
Total distance: 20,002.96 miles
Total steps: 44,913,637
Total time: 307,098.13 minutes (that’s 5,118.30 hours, or 213.26 days, or 0.584 years)
Total calories burned: 1,341,926.0
The median* distance per walk was 15.02 miles; median steps per walk was 33,055; median time per walk was 214.98 minutes (3.583 hours).
Here are boxplots of distance by year. Notice how my walking distances become dramatically more consistent as we move from 2014 to 2019.
*Medians are used instead of means, as all of the distributions of the above variables are highly skewed
Want Some Data?
Hello again, all.
So it occurred to me that I have thousands of data points in the form of my walking data that I haven’t shared in any form other than yearly summaries and graphs.
So I’ve decided to post a link to my entire Excel file of walking data since moving to Calgary. You know, for anyone who needs data or wants to analyze it or who just thinks I’m making it all up.*
So here ya go! Nerd it up.
*I’m not. Do you know how lazy I am? It would take a lot of effort to realistically fake that much data.
Walking 2018
YOOOOOOOOOOO Happy New Year!
It’s January 1st yet again, so let’s do the thing I always do on January 1st and review last year’s walking stats.
Here they are for January 1, 2018 to December 31, 2018.
Total number of walks: 338
Total mileage: 4,328.61
Total number of steps: 9,996,535
Total calories burned: 280,626
Total walking time (minutes): 71,430.14 [that’s about 49.6 days]
Average speed (mph) per walk: 3.71
4,328.61 miles is approximately the great circle distance between Dubai, UAE and Seoul, South Korea or between Rio Gallegos, Argentina and Caracas, Venezuela.
Let’s do better this year.
I was pathetic.
So I was looking over my old blogs (because THAT’S THE KIND OF OBNOXIOUS HUMAN I AM) and noticed that on December 8, 2013, I hit 1,300 walking miles for the year.
I hit 1,300 walking miles on April 29 this year.
My old distances were garbage, yo.
15,000 Miles in Calgary
HEYOOOOOOOOOO so I hit the 15,000 mile mark today. More specifically (because who the hell knows if anyone remembers what I’ve posted in the past), I’ve now walked 15,000 miles since I moved to Calgary in September 2014.
STATS!
- Number of walks: 1,242
- Total mileage: 15,003.38
- Total steps: 32,508,966
- Total time: 221705.16 minutes (or 3,695.09 hours, or 153.96 days)
- Total calories burned: 1,027,018
- Average speed: 4.01 MPH
That’s a lot of walking, yo.
GRAPHS!
Distance by Year
Distance by Month
Distance by Day of Week
Distance for each walk, color-coded by the year
Snazzy! I hope to add on to this quite a bit.
HHHH
I started walking in Calgary on September 8, 2014. I just tallied up all my mileage (counting today’s) and realized that I’m just 138.57 miles away from hitting a total of 15,000 miles walked in Calgary. Pretty snazzy!
Expect an obnoxious mileage-related blog once I reach 15,000. Fair warning.
FUCK YOU, I’M A TURNIP
So I decided to plot my cumulative walking mileage for 2013, 2015, 2016, and 2017* to see if I tend to gain mileage at about the same rate despite the different yearly totals.
Man, look at that total difference at the end of the year for 2013 vs. 2017. I hit 2013’s total mileage on April 8th in 2017.
Lawl, you can see July 2017.
Anyway. The gains look relatively similar across all years I suppose, huh?
*I’m not including my 2014 mileage because I can only find the data from the months I was in Calgary, not the whole year.
Walking 2017
HAPPY NEW YEAR, BUTT-MONGERS!
So it has become my tradition that on the first day of the new year, I dedicate my blog post to reviewing the previous year’s walking mileage. And this one is particularly special to me, because I was able to set a new personal record for the number of miles walked in a year—a personal record that surpassed my previous personal record by more than 1,300 miles.
So let’s do it! Here are my walking stats for January 1, 2017 to December 31, 2017.
- Total number of walks: 314
- Total mileage: 5,100
- Total number of steps: 11,130,160
- Total calories burned: 367,250
- Total walking time (minutes): 71,361.10 [that’s about 49.56 days]
- Average speed (mph) per walk: 4.26
5,100 miles is approximately the (great circle) distance between Kyoto, Japan and Seattle, WA, or between Athens, Greece, and Cape Town, South Africa.
That’s a serious distance, yo. That’s across the Pacific Ocean.
My goal was to walk 5,000 miles last year, and I managed to surpass that by 100 miles. That’s pretty cool.
I mean, this goal took some serious commitment. It might not seem like it was that big of a deal, but it really did take a lot of time, energy, pain, and persistence.
(Mostly pain.)
I walked 15+ miles in temperatures as low as -18 ℉ and as high as 96 ℉ (and shorter distances in temperatures as low as -29 ℉). I walked during serious wind. Serious snow. Serious rain. I walked when there were air quality warnings out because of the smoke during the summer. I walked when I really didn’t feel like it and would have much preferred staying home and being a lazy fart. I turned my feet into angry, gross callouses. Nearly every part of my body was in pain at some point or another due to all the walking. I was getting up at 4 AM to go on those longer 30-mile walks in the summer. Anyone who knows me knows that 4 AM is a bed time, not a “get up” time. I walked a maximum of 50 miles in one day in July. There were a good number of days where I spent more time walking than I did sleeping.
I really want to put this in perspective, because it was a lot of walking. If I had divided that 5,100 miles into daily walks, I would have had to walk 13.97 miles a day. Every single day. I obviously didn’t do that, but that’s what it breaks down to.
Same thing with the time commitment. I spent 49.56 days walking. That’s 49.56 24-hour periods. That’s a lot of time. 71,361.10 minutes is about 1,189.35 hours. Again, if I were to divide that equally across the 365 days of the year, that would be a time commitment of 3.26 hours a day. Every single day. That’s a big-ass time commitment. You can do a lot of things in 3.26 hours.
I’m sorry. I hope I don’t sound like I’m bragging, because I don’t want to brag. This was just a really big deal for me. You don’t spend 49.56 days doing something if it’s not a big deal for you.
Here’s the mileage breakdown by month and by day of the week.
July was serious business.
One other thing I wanted to do: so as I’m sure you’re all aware because I won’t shut up about it, I mangled my quad (?) back in August while walking. I never went to the doctor because doctors are scary, so I actually don’t know what I did to it. But based on the amount of pain and how long it’s still taking to heal*, I’m just going to say that I tore the muscle.
But anyway, this really slowed down my walking speed (and still is, unfortunately). I was consistently around the 4.8, 4.9 MPH range in July and early August before I got hurt. I wanted to see how visible this injury was if I were to plot my MPH by walking date. So I did. Can you guess where the injury happened?
Haha, wow. That’s super obvious (and super depressing). The speed appears to be gradually increasing again, but it’s taking way longer than I’d like to do so. I really hope I’ll be able to get back to my 4.9 MPH pace.
Anyway. I promised Nate and my mom that I wouldn’t try to beat this record of 5,100 miles for 2018 (I’ll also be teaching two classes this first semester, one of which is going to take a lot of prep since I’ve never taught it before), so I doubt I’ll even get close to that mileage again.
But I’m proud of the 5,100. It’s nice to know that I can do it.
*The healing process probably would have been faster if I hadn’t taken two days off after the injury and then went right back to daily 15-mile walks, but that’s how I roll.
4,000 MILES
YO DAWGZ I just hit 4,000 walking miles for the year!
That’s about 300 more than I did last year, but still 1,000 short of my goal.
Can I walk 1,000 miles in a little less than three months? Surely. I’ve been keeping a pace of 400+ miles a month, even with Injury City, so it shouldn’t be a problem.
Unless the weather tanks. Which it might.
Alberta, yo.
Record Mileage!
So July is over.
Time to talk about miles.
This year has had some record months in terms of walking distance. I think I’ve walked more than 400 every month of the year this year, actually.
But July? A completely different story.
- Total July mileage: 670.48
- Total July steps: 1,472,068
- Average July speed: 4.6 mph
- Total time spent walking in July: 8,687.4 minutes
8,687.4 minutes is nearly 145 hours. That’s a bit more than 6 days.
I spent 6 whole days walking in July.
I walked on 23 of the 31 days in the month, which means my average walk was 29.15 miles long.
I also had that 50-mile walk, which I’m pretty damn proud of.
Here’s a graph of all my walks.
Here’s a graph of miles by day of the week.
WOO RECORD WALKING MONTH
LEIBNIZ DAY 2017
IT’S LEIBNIZ DAY!!
YAY!!
It’s also Canada’s 150th birthday, but Leibniz day takes precedence for me. The guy invented calculus, yo. Would Canada even exist without calculus?
I GUESS WE’LL NEVER KNOW, WILL WE
(Sorry, I’m hyper.)
I also did a 30-mile walk this afternoon/evening. It took me 6 hours and 18 minutes, but I kept a pace of 4.77 MPH despite it being obscenely hot and then obscenely thunderstormy. My feet/legs didn’t feel any worse than they do after a typical 15-mile walk, so hey, that’s cool. I’mma try it again on Monday.
(I spent most of my walk thinking about Leibniz, not gonna lie.)
Mileage Update: Halfway Point
If I had walked 15 miles a day six days a week (as was my goal at the beginning of the year), my current mileage should be: 2,340
What my current mileage actually is: 2,433.19
Nice? But 90 miles a week won’t get me to 5,000 miles for the year!
To be on pace for the 5,000 miles, my current mileage should be: 2,500 (duh)
So I’m a little behind.
TO BE FAIR, I’ve had to take quite a few days off from walking entirely in order to get all my work done for teaching this semester. And since I don’t have anything else to do in July*, I’m going to try to not only make up the difference in miles but try to get ahead of pace.
So yeah. Hopefully I’ll be able to make it!
*“Get a job, you lazy bum,” you say? Well, I technically got paid for a whole summer’s worth of work teaching during spring. Plus, I’m still holding out and hoping that I’ll get another class to teach in the fall (pleasepleasepleaseplease). PLUS, I’m going to Moscow in August and then on a week-long cruise with Nate, and I don’t know if any job would be willing to give me that much time off right off the bat. So for now, I’m going to take advantage of the awesome opportunity I have to spend a whole month walking to my heart’s content. How many people get to do that?
Zeet Zeet I’m a Beet
HOKAY, so I’ve walked a total of 2,199.32 miles this year so far. I want to get to 2,500 by July 1st.
So can I walk 300.68 miles in June?
I should be able to. Heck, given what I’ve walked so far this year, I’m actually averaging 439.864 miles per month, which is way more than I’ve ever done per month in the past.
SNAZZY!
Also, have some Braves playing terribly.
I’m completely under Saucony’s thumb and I don’t even care
Ayyyyyyy, so today I broke in my third pair of shoes this year. As far as my previous pair goes, here are some stats, all cumulative since March 20th:
Distance: 839.96 miles
Steps: 1,815,832
Average speed: 4.54 mph
Total time spent walking: 189 hours and 20 minutes (that’s like 7.8 days of walking, haha)
Hooray for a new pair of shoes!
Edit: blister party 2k17!
Edit 2: blister party 2k17, it is now 4:00 in the morning and I’m calling the cops. Please stop.
Edit 3: the blisters have bought the downstairs condo and are partying 24/7. Send help.
Well now I HAVE to do it
So as you probably all know, I’ve been doing my “walk 15 miles six days a week” thing this year. I’ve been half joking that I’m going to try to get to 5,000 miles by the end of the year.
Then I found this out:
That distance? 4,989 miles.
And now I practically have to make it to 5,000 miles. Walking across the Pacific Ocean? Awesome. Especially since I walked across the Atlantic Ocean last year.
Counting today’s walk, I’m at 1,776.3 miles. That puts me about here:
Long way to go!
Eigenblogger 