My Test Walk to Downtown and Back

What I did and why

I've been wanting to do my Les Mills Combat DVDs for the 60 day plan, but I have been pretty sore and weak lately. I"m pretty sure that I've been overdoing things. Before starting Les Mills Combat, I decided that I needed a recovery week. So starting Monday my exercise can only be walking outside of a gym. I can't do the treadmill because I will be tempted to kick it up faster and run, plus even at 2.5 MPH, I get shin pain. Also, if I go to the gym, the chances are good that I'll go pick up some dumbbells or hop on the lat pull down machine. Oh how I love lat pull downs. Anyway, I live in a pretty rural town and I don't like walking in the dark because I have an irrational fear of being attacked by coyotes. I don't fear people, but the coyotes might eat me. I think the center of town should be coyote free and I might get some nice shots of the deer using the cross walk. The deer in this town seriously use the cross walks. Back on track. Today was my test to see how long it would take me to get to the end of downtown and back to my house.

The Walk

I left my house and headed down the path that led to downtown. I then walk to the opposite end of town turned and then turned again so I was then heading back towards the house, but on the street parallel to the street that I had been on. I took the back way home and stopped at the mailbox. The path is pretty flat. I tried to keep a steady pace and I used my arms as much as I could without feeling like a complete dork. The path was mainly on concrete, but there was some asphalt. I didn't get out of breath, but I was breathing a little heavy. I didn't end up with any shin pain! It was a nice cardio effort, but shouldn't cause any soreness later. My glutes are still store and my upper back is a little sore. We're doing a hike tomorrow, but after that, I'm only going to do this downtown walk for a week! I'm not really sure what we'll do for a hike next weekend though. We'll probably have to find something nice and flat if we do any at all. We haven't talked that far ahead! 

Overall, I was pretty happy with my results as far as time and speed. I was pretty surprised that I didn't end up with any hip or back pain during my walk. When we go hiking, I stop a lot and take pictures, but I didn't stop on this trip. I did have to slow down because of the tourists. I picked rodeo weekend to walk through downtown. That wasn't my smartest move. At least it wasn't quilt show weekend though! 

BodyMedia Screen Shot

I tried to get the workout tab for this walk, but the Bluetooth connection died at some point during the walk. i do ave the calories per minute thing from the website. I was pretty happy with the look of this since it really does show that I kept a pretty steady pace for the bulk of the trip. 

MapMyHike Screen Shot

I cropped this up and moved stuff around to get rid of the map. I didn't really want anyone to have a map right to my house. Not that I think anyone of you will stalk me and feed me to the coyotes, but it just didn't seem right putting a map to the house on here. The important part is to see my pace and elevation chart and my split times. You can ignore the 1242 calories burned since there is no way that it's accurate. I am a bit surprised that MapMyHike says that this was 2.48 miles, but last weekend when we stopped at the frozen yogurt place it said it was like 2.16 miles. I went waaaaaaaay beyond the frozen yogurt place! Oh well. 

Back Country Navigator Screen Shot

So Back Country Navigator and MapMyHike agreed on the distance traveled this time. That's a promising thought. They both have similar numbers for the high and low elevation as well. Back Country Navigator has a major issue with the max speed. Since the max speed is used when figuring out the average speed, I can't really trust the average speed here, but MapMyHike shows me walking a mile in about 20 minutes which would be 3 MPH. I have no idea where this max speed comes from on this app. I didn't run. Even if I could run, I don't think I'd be doing 6.7 MPH. I did take my phone out of my pocket, but other than that, it was in my pocket the whole time. I wonder what my speed would be if I put my phone on an arm band and went crazy with the arm swinging. I like this app, but I don't know if it's worth the $12 for what I actually use it for. I like to see the comparison to MapMyHike and it's a nice backup, but if this is all I'm going to use it for, should I spend money on it? I have to decide soon since it's only a 21 day trial.