Middle-Aged-Man

After returning from a business trip in Orlando, Florida this last week, without a doubt I need to recommit to some level of fitness. I talked to one really nice lady, named Carol Hess, who happens to run. She has fun running marathons and has been running for a few decades. She really inspired me to get back on “track”. What inspired me was her story about over coming cancer. She is a true over comer, and I was impressed.

I want to pattern my fitness after the saying of “12 Days of Christmas Fitness”. Starting tonight December 8th. This does not line up with the actual 12 Days of Christmas, but I feel motivated and did not want to wait.

Each day, I want to commit to doing my walking (1-1/2 hours to 2 hours), followed up by at least 1/2 hour of more strenuous exercise. For example, running a minimum of two miles, swimming, cycling on the trainer (too cold to ride outside and at night). Stair climbing, such as at work, we have 16 flights of stairs in the corner of our building. When I was in better shape that would whip me good, running up those babies.

Tonight, I ran two miles on the treadmill doing it in 19:45 minutes. Because of my bad calf (today, it did not hurt), I like the consistency of the treadmill, plus it does have less impact on this old frame.

Today, my steps are over 23,700. I place my steps on my activity calendar, if you would like to it check it out.

It started in January, when Tracy Whittaker and I were walking at lunch. We thought it was possible with the amount of steps we walk each day, we could sum them up to the entire distance across America. I did some calculations and its seemed like a doable goal. That would be about 16,000 steps a day. So, on January 21st we started at Santa Monica Pier. Each day we would count our steps with our pedometer and report them in www.walkertacker.com. You can see my progress at their site, walkertracker.com/douglas. On November 30th, right before I went on a business trip, I reached the shores at Jacksonville, Florida. Below is the some data and the map of the journey.

• Total Miles 2,458.4

• Total Steps: 5,024,726

• goal: 16,000 goal of steps a day 15,801 actual steps average

Viturally Across America in One Year!

My goal to virtually walk across America is on track for reaching Jacksonville, Florida. That is a total of 2,429 miles. As of today, I am at Mobile Alabama or 2,019 miles that is over four million steps. I have 410 miles to go, in about 80 days. After I reach Jacksonville, and I have enough time, I will try to get the extra 450 miles to reroute from Santa Monica Pier to New York.

Virtual Walk Across America

I want to be better at the metric system. So, I am converting from Standard system to the Metric system on my fitness reporting. I recently, saw a map of the countries that use the standard system.

It is scary to see that the US and two other countries (that I cannot name) are the only ones that use the standard system. I confess, I am not good at it. So, my fitness is a good place to start with a conversion. I need to think in both systems, so I found out that I am 185lb/85km in weight. I changed the preferences on my Garmin 305 and in Motionbased. So look for numbers that do not make sense, such as kilo-meter, and CM and MM. For example, my Garmin asked my my bike tire in millimeters.

I have been walking virtually across America as one of my fitness goals.  I started counting my steps on January 21st using a pedometer (model Omron HJ-112) and recording my results in a website called, walkertracker. Each day I enter my steps, both types total and aerobic. Aerobic steps start to be counted when 10 minutes of consistent walking and over 100 steps a minute are obtained. The goal to walk across America starts at the Santa Monica Pier in California to continues to Jacksonville, Florida.

As of today, I recorded my three millionth step or 3,000,454 which translate to 1,468.0 miles. Some other facts, the most steps in one day is 46,601 (hiking in Yosemite) and least amount of steps is 743 in one day when I sitting on my butt with my soft cast on my calf muscle.

My daily average is 15,960 steps for each day. As a simple calculation, 2,000 steps equals one mile or an average of eight miles a day.

Today’s activities, I lifted weights and felt really good, but made myself so tired, I could hardly lift my arms at my desk. I went home had dinner and went swimming at 8:30pm. I saw and swam with Marissa Alonsagay from work. She just started coming. She was reserving a lane as well as I was, when this big guy from the opposite side, just sorta jump into her lane, that made it easy she would swim in my lane. I swam hard as I could for a two laps. The first lap is somewhat easy, but I get tired, and the second lap is not in very good form. I am trying to swim as hard as I can and increase my distance. I did a couple of all out in two laps, then settled into 10 laps of breast stroke. My arms were so tired (from weight lifting), and I finished up swimming some more all out one laps. I got out before Marissa, and went to the showers.

When I got home, I knew I wanted to walk my dog, (that is good for 6,000 steps). My wife Teri joined me and when we got to 15th street and Avenue H, I suggested running to 20th Street West. That would be 1/2 mile, (we ran the day before for two miles). We started running and I stopped at H and 20th, but Teri kept going. What! I started to run after her. She ran all the way home, that is 1-1/2 miles total. I managed to run it as well, since I could not let my wife beat me. I had no plans on running this day.

She mentioned how good it was to run that distance and at that time (it was about 10:30pm), she normally gets more tired when we run in the morning, but she stated she had plenty of energy, she had dinner prior, and when we run in the mornings, she does not eat prior to running.

Overall, it was a very tiring day.

After three days off from work for the holiday and weekend, it is hard to get in activities when you return to work. I personally would like to do two activities a day for the month of July, but finding that kinda of time is hard.

Today, I did my walking. I walked at work with Tracy and with my dog late in the evening. I managed to get in 19,279 steps (9.43 miles).

After work and after dinner, I lifted some weights, not as much as I wanted, because I was going swimming. Today was a personal record, it was the first time that I was able to do five chin ups. I have a goal of being able to do 10, so I am half way there. I did some core exercises, like bird-dog, planks and side planks, hum, that was not my favorite thing to do.

I went to the pool and it was not crowded at all. I had a lane to myself, (that was nice). I did about 1/2 hour in the pool workout. My goal for this month is to swim as hard as I can for each lap, rest (get my breathing under control) and repeat. Today most of the work was doing the free style, with the exception of 10 non-stop laps in the middle doing the breast stroke. My side seem to hurt today, it may have been from doing some core exercise earlier.

In about a month, I want to do a Splash N Dash. A 400 meter swim and 3K run in Ventura. The distance is a little over 17 laps in the pool. I am a little nervous, because I have never really swam in the ocean and I do not know what to expect. Will the waves be up, making it hard to breath? Swimming is easy in the pool, when I get to the end, I can push off the edge each time. In the ocean there is no pushing off. So, I will need to be in the pool for at least double the distance of 400 meters , like 34 or 35 laps. I can swim that now, but I want to do it a high intensity, (more burn, less fat).

At the end of each month, I like to sum up where I am on my walking goals. The year long goal is to virtually walk across America in 2008. I started in mid January and today, I have walked some 2,003,642 steps or 980.3 miles. I track my steps using, www.walkertracker.com Each day the goal is to walk about 16K steps. Lately, since being hurt my numbers are low, once healed, I will be back and I hope June will a full month.

I have been walking for a goal of virtually walking across America in one year. I started in Mid January and set a goal of 16,000 steps a day.

As of first of May, I have walked 1,593,289 steps or an average of 15,933 a day (a little shy of my goal). The distance so far is 779.5 miles. On the map that is about walking from Santa Monica Pier in California to Albuquerque New Mexico.

Last night, I got out to run. I talked Tracy, one of my fitness partners to join me. We set out at 6:00pm at the aqueduct, and there was no wind, that is rare. We started running west from 60th Street West, until we reached the pump station, that is about 1.5 miles. We walked for the first half mile (to warm up, after stretching), then ran one mile. I was experiencing some discomfort with my shins. At the mid point, we walked a 1/4 mile, then ran for 1.5 miles back to the gate. At the end we did a 1/2 mile walk for cool down.