walking

hello, just discovered this site! :)

suppose i'll start with what i did this morning.. seems the most sensible thing to do.

Ran for 2 miles (15 minutes) under starlight - a great opportunity to see falling stars and satellites - and then walked for 30 minutes.

I usually do that every morning. Hope to eventually run farther as the year goes on, and if it keeps at such a warm temperature here in Iowa it's entirely possible.

This is a great site - just found it today and have been downloading various fitPod mixes. I was looking for other beginners to chat with and get some motivation from but the only blog I could find was Andrews....? Am I missing something? At any rate, I used to run and in the past, have completed 4 half marathons (nothing spectacular time-wise, but hey, I did them!). Then I hurt my knee and had to stop running...couldn't find anything else to take its place, got depressed... and gained a HUGE amount of weight. Now I'm facing the gargantuan task of starting from zero. I can't believe I got to this point...so now I have started to walk and in a week or so will begin to incorporate some running "breaks" into my walk, and so on. If there is anyone else out there looking for someone to lean on, chat with, or just find some inspiration/motivation, give me a holler.

3:07 minutes (4.29 MB)

geechi3 . Look for her tracks in the fitmusic free track download library.

You may think that back-to-school is a long way off, but here's some interesting info on kids walking to school from the American College of Sports Medicine. This is excerpted from their summer newsletter: ACSM Fit Society

If you asked a group of people 40 or older whether they walked to school, about half would answer yes. If you asked young students today, one or two in 10 would answer yes.

There are several possible explanations for the decline in active travel (i.e., walking or “rolling” by bicycle, skates, skateboard, or wheelchair) to school, and there is movement afoot to reverse this trend.

We hope the ants' pedometers have better quality control than most others on the market...(click image to enlarge)

New Scientist (a short video clip included) reports that desert ants have an internal pedometer that keeps track of how many steps they take, according to a new study.

"Desert ants have an internal system - like a pedometer - that keeps track of how many steps they take, according to a new study. The insects seem to rely on this system to find their way back to the nest after foraging. Other insects may also possess this pedometer-like system.

Many Pedometers Can't Keep the Pace, June 21 - HealthDay News

Cheaper pedometers that purport to measure each step you take may not always be accurate, a new Belgian study finds. Researchers at the University of Ghent tested more than 1,000 pedometers. They had 35 adult volunteers wear 30 pedometers -- five per day -- that measured their steps for six days. The volunteers also maintained an automated step-count log that precisely logged their steps. Counts from both the pedometers and the automatic step log were compared for accuracy. In one in every three pedometers tested, the count was off by more than 50 percent as compared to the automated step log -- and in about two-thirds of these pedometers, steps recorded were higher than those taken and noted by the log.

Sometimes when I am plugged in and walking, a song hits with my stride and just sets me stepping. For some reason, Bonnie Raitt almost always seems to do the trick. A couple of tracks like "Let's give them something to talk about," or "Working on a love letter" are just RIGHT IN THE POCKET. I want mOrE of this kind of stuff (Aimee Mann comes to mind..."keep it down, down...voices carry"). Any suggestions?