Founder of the Social Media Escape Club
Walking is so good, from Kate McCusker in The Guardian:
These days, walking is, for me, the exercise equivalent of hiding vegetables in my mashed potatoes: suddenly I’ve covered four miles in one stretch without really noticing. In the evenings, walking 90 minutes home from work is like making peace with the day, however good, bad or unremarkable it might have been.
A 90 minute walk in no joke. (via rebecca toh)
Woke up to a winter wonderland this morning. After clearing off the deck and stairs, had to get out and take some photos.
Once the snow stops, “the boys come out to play” as my neighbor said.
So it’s been nine full weeks of walking 10 miles per day. Over three hours per day on my feet, usually 2.5-4 miles at a time, a few times a day. Some days I ever the 10 miles wrapped up by 5pm, other days it’s a little later (as you can tell by the photo above).
I usually walk without music. Sometimes I’ll listen to a podcast. I guess I should listen to more audiobooks or something, but right now I like the singular focus.
When I have ideas, I’ll usually dictate them into my phone via Wisper Flow (affiliate link). When I get home, I’ll move those notes where they need to go, sometimes as to-do items, or ideas for upcoming Social Media Escape Club posts.
I can’t say I’ve lost a ton of weight, but I feel lighter, more mobile, clothes fit a bit better. Overall I think it’s the mental win each day, that I can do this physical thing day after day with my 50th birthday just a few months away.
As I descend deeper into the undoing, I’ve landed on my watch. Earlier this year I bought a nice Coros watch to monitor my elevation gained in real time on my runs. These last two months, though, I’ve been deep into “just walking,” even though I’m covering 10 miles per day (I believe today is day 56 of 10 miles per day).
So for each walk, I hit a button on my watch, which has to calibrate the GPS and my heart rate. At the end of each walk, I have to hit stop on the watch, let it sync with the Coros app on my phone, which then syncs with Strava, which is where all my running and (lately) walking data is stored (since 2016).
Today, though, I left the watch at home. For each walk today (a total of four) I tracked the activity on my iPhone via the Strava app. Hit start, lock my iPhone, and throw it in my bag.
Now instead of two apps to track my walk, and two devices, it’s just one. This also means keeping track of charging one device, rather than two.
This season of undoing has me rethinking everything. It sounds small, but I’m out there nearly 24 hours a week, and every bit of mental clutter adds up. Simplifying what I have to manage for these walks feels like reclaiming a little peace at the end of the day.
I’ve been intentionally walking 10 miles per day for about 42 days now. By “intentional” I mean not just walking around the grocery store, or picking a parking space very far from the store entrance, but by clicking start on my watch and walking 3-5 miles at a time, a few times per day.
When I worked my first job in the city, and walking a mile from the apartment to the 7 train (and back) every day, I didn’t track that. Heck, the iPhone didn’t even exist yet!
But these days I am getting up early or getting up away from my computer and going for a long walk as often as I can.
I try to get in three miles before 8am. Five miles by noon. That makes it easier to get in a smaller walk in the early afternoon, and wrap up the days walking by evening. Somedays I have to get in 4.5 miles after 5pm, which I don’t much care for. Other times, though, I get out for two extra miles after 6pm, hitting 11 or 12 miles for the day.
Today is the 19th, and I’ve walked 209.8 miles, an average of 11.05 miles per day.
Since getting hurt over the summer from running, I’ve turned to walking. Lots of walking. Basically 10 miles per day of inentional “start my watch and go” sort of walking. This week I walked 82 miles.
Finding this post from Jeremy Maluf is gonna be bad.
If you didn’t know, there was a point in my life where I was “The Bike Nerd.” I had a Tumblr for it, where I would post photos similar to the above.
One morning in 2010, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, I woke up, took my bed apart, left it on the curb, and rode away. I rode to Rutherford, NJ that day, about 31 miles, on my single speed bike.
I’m not saying I have the itch to get rid of everything and bike across the country again, but I’m not not saying it, either.
Felt like being a running influencer tonight. Why not? I’ve definitely got some work to do in the storyboard department, might help actually filming the end of the run, too, but hey, this is just the start of runfluencer career change. Enjoy!
There’s a “mountain” here. I call it Leaser Lake Mountain, since the lake is at the base of the dirt road that goes up and over. The Appalaciahan Trail runs along the top, too. It’s magical.
Last April I got back to running, but decided I’m gonna go for elevation instead of mileage. How many feet can I climb in a year? By the end of 2024 I had climbed 83,000′ of elevation. This year I’m already at 78,000′, getting comfortable with 5000′ per week lately.
Since it’s been so hot here in Northeast PA, I didn’t get much running in. Finally on Saturday there was a break, so I went up and down my Leaser Lake Mountain three times, something I’ve never done before. That’s 11.3 miles, and 2,605′ of climbing,
The fantasy was to do that again today, Sunday, so I could hit my 5,000′ goal, but that absolutely didn’t happen. I still hit 3,229′ which is still solid, and finally got back to another 30 mile week. Happy with both of those numbers.
