I first became aware of the #Walk1000Miles initiative via social media in December and it only took a matter of minutes for me to sign up beyond the discovery.
This is not my latest long-distance charity walk… Even if it was, it was be one huge step up from my regular twenty-to-thirty miles! Because the aim her is simple; to get people outdoors and to encourage more people in to a regular habit of walking. A challenge of seeing how many miles you can cover within twelve-months probably adds to the incentive for some.
Yes, I probably should’ve written this post a month ago! No doubt, there are going to be people who haven’t already come across this but would still like to get involved and may feel as though they’re already a month behind… My apologies for that!
My personal goal here is not to walk to a specific target (ie. one-thousand miles) but to walk as often as possible – even though it’s kind of what I have already been doing for the past three years!
But if, come the 1st of December, I find myself close to nine-hundred miles for the year, I may well push to complete the full millennium.
Most people, I imagine, are attempting to walk close to one-hundred miles each month in the hope of completing achieving their target with a few miles extra to spare, if not in advance and ahead of the ‘deadline’. Some will include footsteps taken during their working day; others will log their exact routes and distances using GPS and a smartphone app. There are no hard and fast rules and you don’t have to set intense deadlines if you’d like to take part.
One thing I have begun to enjoy is sharing photos with the Facebook group for this event. As it stands at the time of writing; there are more than nine-hundred members involved there. Even when you’re not able to get out or if you’re finding it hard to motivate yourself, you can see the adventures and discoveries that others have made. Some will walk a long distance while plenty of others will walk little and often. You could pick up tips on how to add a few miles to your average day and, best of all, you can talk and connect with others.
My personal aim here, as I said earlier, is simply to walk as often as possible. Regardless of the weather. I’d like to get out at least once each weekend, even if that only means a two-mile stroll around the village during these wet and windy times. Over the summer, I expect my mileage to naturally increase. Somewhere at the back of my mind though, I like the idea of averaging about fifty-miles each month, even in winter.
I am (casually) keeping track of my own figures and will only include proper walks – whether that’s with friends, a group or by myself – and short walks around the local area. For example, I am not going to attempt to compile the distances I cover up and down the floor at work each day or as I navigate the aisles in a supermarket.
This month, I’ve just accumulated the following total:
Brean Down – 3 miles
Wotton-Under-Edge – 10 miles
Cam Peak – 11.25 miles
Crook Peak – 6 miles
Sand Bay and Sand Point – 5.5 miles
Plus approximately 10.5 miles of village walking.
Grand total for January 2016 = 46.25 miles
So, despite not feeling as though I have done as much walking as I would do in the summer, I’m still close to my personal aim for the month, which is good. I think I’ll make this update-post a regular feature for the final day of every month, so that I can at least keep track of my own progress and habits, which I’ve never actually done before.
