I walk a lot – either regular or Nordic walking. It is my primary way of toning up the body and keeping weight under control.

Ideally, I’d walk every day, first thing in the morning since I enjoy the great outdoors and feel that it sets up the day nicely. I usually feel invigorated and ready to take on any challenge before me.
However, most morning, I find myself hitting the snooze button because really – who wants to get up at 5am? Definitely not me!

That said, today was different. I was up and out quite quickly and walked 16 miles.

The initial goal was 8miles but then I was still some distance away from my house on the loop back and so goal became 12 miles. Then on getting closer to my house, realised I wasn’t going to make the new 12 miles goal, so headed in a different direction and ended up walking 16.54miles to be exact.

I know the exact mileage, duration, pace, speed, elevation climb, calories burned and a whole host of other variables because in the last few months I’ve started to use an iPhone app called RunKeeper when I’m out exercising.

The summary for the day, month and then year to date helps to keep me honest, motivated and in many ways has pushed me to go further. Heck, prior to using it, there’s no way I would have walked 16 miles in one go.
Sure I had ambitions in the past to run the Chicago Marathon, but in that I’ve got shaky knees, I gave up on that dream long ago. But who knows, perhaps I can increase my walking speed to finish a marathon in a respectable time.

Not committing to anything just yet – but definitely think I should train for a race.

So perhaps I should look at training to speed walk a half marathon or maybe a 10K. That’s only 6.4miles.