I’ve been walking, yes indeed

Today is the start of a new month, the first complete calendar month in which I’ve done a walking workout every single day. Naturally, I put all the data into a spreadsheet to allow me track my progress and because, spreadsheets. I use them for all sorts of things.

February was a good month overall, especially my goal at this point is still to build up stamina, and I think I’m doing that. I thought I’d share some stats from this February—something I may do again at the end of March, at the end of the quarter, but if I do any updates after that, it’ll probably only be at the end of each quarter.

In February, my walking workouts covered a total of 52.68 kilometres (35.219319 miles), compared to 46.36 kilometres (28.806768 miles) in January. My average pace on my workouts over the month was 14:04 per kilometre, compared to 13:09 in January.

I had an average daily total daily of 7141 steps per day in February, which includes all my steps, not just those from the walking workouts (the workouts don’t track steps for some reason). The average total distance I covered each day in February was 5.78 kilometres (3.591525 miles), again, that’s total distance walked, not just from workouts; I only know my distance from workouts alone because of my spreadsheet. The totals in January were pretty similar, however, the difference between this year and last is significant: In February 2024, I had a daily average of 3,953 total steps per day and an average total distance of 3.36 kilometres (2.23694 miles) per day. February was my worst month in 2024 (after that month, my overall totals were much better.

All of those are just numbers, and honestly probably of interest to me alone. So I decided to have a bit of fun: The map up shows the towns in a 50 kilometre radius of Hamilton [SOURCE]. It’s not necessarily possible to easily walk to some of those towns, and certainly not by me, but it’s kind of interesting to see how far 50 kilometres really is. As a bonus, several places I’ve talked about at one point or another—like Cambridge, Raglan, Huntly, and Matamata—are all within that circle, and others that I’ve talked about, and that had roles in my past life, like Paeroa, Thames, Pukekohe, Waiuku, Clarks Beach, and Te Kuiti are all visible.

The thing about these stats, and even the map, is that looking at the data visually on a spreadsheet (or even on that map) somehow keeps me committed to the plan. Some of it’s probably that I’m competitive with myself, and I constantly want to do better than I’ve done in the past. I want to try to tap into that self-competitiveness to get some other things done, too, because maybe it’ll work for other plans and goals, too? I know some people get more stuff done when they make things like chores into a game, and, in a sense, that’s what I’ve been doing.

Still, February is my only full calendar month of daily walks so far (plus most of January, of course), so it’s a bit early to take a victory lap. I want this to be a lifestyle change, and not just a temporary obsession. Creating opportunities for me to compete with myself—including my making a spreadsheet with my data—may do exactly that.