As we were walking on the course on Sunday, I noticed that Doyce had a pedometer.
I wore one of those for a month or so, as I got started on my diet. I think I eventually stopped wearing it because I had a sense of how many steps I was taking a day, but the number fluctuated a lot, and eventually I knew how many calories I was burning from walking, and that was that.
“Yeah, Jackie got it for me for our anniversary. It’s letting me keep track of my Five Hundred Miles to Nowhere.”
I’ll be damned.
It makes perfect sense.
Marn started it, at least for me, complete with its own project site, but it was something I associated solely with, well, you know … exercise. Like, “I did a mile and a half on the jogging machine at the gym.” Or, “I ran a couple miles around the track this morning.” Like, Real, Scientific, Measured Movement of the sort that Ahnold (or Marn) would Officially Recognize (and even award a rubber ducky for).
But a pedometer — ah, it’s fiendishly clever! And, being someone who has no time, something I can do. Because I do walk. A lot. And I can measure it, with that same pedometer. I walk here. I walk there. I walk my feet off everywhere. As Dr Seuss might say.
I can walk five hundred miles. And I can walk five hundred more. Just to be the man who … uh, I digress. Though havering with Margie sounds fun.
At any rate, if all I need to do is just, y’know, walk (as opposed to Use Expensive Gym Equipment, or Jog on Cushy Blue Foamy Track Material), then, damn, I’m there.
It’s late to shoot for 500 miles this year. But yesterday was the 250th day of the year. I started wearing a pedometer yesterday (too late to harvest the golf games, but in time for the corn maze), meaning that as of yesterday, we have 366 – 250 = 116 days left (32%) in 2004. 500/366 = 1.37 miles/day * 116 = 160 miles (rounding up) to walk.
I can do that. It will earn me at least three rubber duckies. 
And that’s nothing to quack at.
(And, lest I get smug, Marn is currently at 660 miles out of her thousand mile goal. And Doyce is at 406 out of 500. So I have a lot of catching up to do … Though, according to the pedometer, I’ve clocked 6.5 miles already.)
I’ll let you know how it goes.
Makes perfect sense indeed. Although I’m only clocking certain non-gym things (taking the dogs out for a walk, the golf course) that I’m mentally counting as ‘exercise’, it’s a short step (thankyew, I’ll be here all week) from there to tracking your walk over to Tokyo Joe’s every day (which I would undoubtably be counting, were I doing it 🙂
Side note: Google has helpfully decided that “rubber duckies” are the theme of the AdSense ads for this page …
However, it’s not 500 miles to Nowhere, it’s 500 miles to the Future.
Keeping track of mileage is one of the things that keeps me riding my bike. At the end of the year, I can point to my total mileage for the year as a real accomplishment. I think this is a great motivational tool that should not be sneezed at, even if you’re convinced it’s too geeky to tell other people your mileage as I am.
Geekily proclaiming my mileage will probably not be a problem.
Of course, the sort of walking I do isn’t the Grand Aerobic Exercise that gym machines and the track provide. On the other hand, it’s (a) a lot more likely to happen, and (b) a lot better than sitting my ass.
Mooo Haaa Haaa – it was all part of my fiendish plan to see my husband more and now you have fallen pray to my scheme as well!
Well, if you wanted to see me more, you could just invite us over …
(Hey, I could walk over to Jackie’s and get some good mileage in!)
Hopefully yours won’t reset like mine did (twice, thank you very much), prior to me getting great satisfaction from thunging it, quit forcefully, off of the inside of the dumpster next to my parking spot at home.
I plan on recording off the amounts on a regular basis.
Kudos, ***Dave and Jackie for the pedometer idea! My feeling is that anything that helps us separate butt from sofa but also makes family time possible is a wonderful thing indeed.
Me, I’m obscenely lazy. Making a public resolution was good because it made me feel more accountable and increased the odds that I would, indeed, stick with it. I hope you have the same experience. The downside of going public, of course, is that if you fail you will fail in a very public way.
Now that I’ve torqued my knee it’s pretty much a given I won’t get to 1,000 miles this year, my original goal. Still, having it before me means I won’t give up, either. Knowing that other folks, such as you and Doyce, are also plugging away at goals inspires me no end.
The rowing machine is teaching me insane amounts of respect for the Olympic rowers. I watched the races in Athens and at one point one of the commentators to the 5K said that at 1K from the line the teams had gone into sprint mode and were rowing at 36 strokes a minute.
Well, I did 4K at a pitiful 28 strokes a minute and then tried to ratchet it up to 36 strokes. The best I did? 33 strokes. And I could only hold it for very brief periods before my heart tried to leap out of my chest and flop around on the floor. By my last 500M I was rowing a truly sad 25 strokes a minute and killing myself to get that.
This adventure in fitness is helping me to realize what amazing things world class athletes accomplish. I used to be kind of dismissive of jocks, to sort of assume that it came naturally to them, without much effort. Now I’m getting a glimmer of the effort.
Wow.
I look forward to seeing your duckies mount. It cracks me up no end that Google ads have decided that you are a rubber duckie friendly site :))
Thanks, Marn. When I get to my first, I’ll make a formal submission to fivehundred . 🙂
By the way, “havering” is Scots for vomiting.
Source? The dictionary indicates it’s Scots to chatter foolishly (and that matches all the other references I am able to find for it, including Scots slang at the Beeb). I can’t find anything in Google that associates it with vomiting.