Walk to Work Week

Three posts in two days... Don't worry - this outpouring won't last!

This week it is Walk to Work Week (there was a reason for me mentioning that I had walked in in my post yesterday...) - an effort to get the country walking rather than sat in traffic queues.

The intentions are very sound - show people how easy it is to walk a mile or two, and they might do it more often, rather than driving in.

And I have walked twice - this morning's walk was slightly quicker - bang on an hour and a half, rather than 1 hr 36 mins, and slightly shorter (5.73 miles instead of 6) as I cut the corner off...

However, part of the way the site works is to calculate how much carbon you have saved by walking instead of going by car - this doesn't help as a motivator for me, as I come in by train, and that train will run whether I am on it or not!

It also gives you a calorie counter, which is just depressing - so far this week, according to it (I did sneak in my walk to the station last night as well), I have burned off 1278 calories, which is only 6 and a half cupcakes. Doesn't really seem a lot for three hours of exercise when you put it like that!!

I also get a bit frustrated with the site, as I use a website called Map My Run to measure how far I travel (it also does lovely things like calculating calories based on your weight, height and age, rather than the rough calculation that W2W gives you...), so I *know* that I travelled 6 miles on Monday - however, as the W2W site only lets you put in a time, rather than a distance, and it then calculates an average distance from the time, it stole a whole 0.7 miles from me as I walk faster than the national average! So I have to then recalculate a time compared on the distance I've walked {sigh}.

I did find this morning's walk interesting, though - the sun shone, which instantly meant that it was nicer than yesterday, but today, I knew how far I had to walk. Yesterday, I knew the map, but not what it would feel like, nor the landmarks along the way. Today, my brain knew how far it was, my muscles knew how far it was (and were already yelling from yesterday), and the blister on my foot knew how far it was (indeed, it invited a friend to join it, so I now have matching pairs!)

However, I still really enjoyed it. I will try to walk in tomorrow and Thursday as well (I can't on Friday, as I have to be in work early in order to leave early for TKD), depending on whether it is sunny or not (I'm not doing an hour and a half in the rain again!) and on whether my legs will actually walk that far...