Friday 3 January 2014

December and 2013 in review

2013 seems to have whizzed by and it is already 2014.

Overall, this has been a big year.

Most Wednesdays see me walking the 6km to the gym, working out with Sue, my personal trainer, and walking home. I do tend to duck in to Brother's Oven on the way home for a coffee if I have the time. It certainly seems to give me a boast and makes the walk home that little bit easier. On the way to the gym I usually take the short route which is the path alongside Athlon Drive. I usually walk along the lake on the trip.

Having got through Wednesdays there has been a lot more walking.

In January Trevor and I spent a week in the Victorian Alpine country walking with Auswalks. It was all very civilised with nice accommodation, great food and good company. Best of all, we only needed to carry a day pack. Even that got heavy when extra water was being carried because of the hot weather.

In the first half of September we did the Coast to Coast walk in England. This was 13 days of walking covering 192 miles, more rather then less, from St Bees on the Cumbrian coast to Robin Hood Bay just north of Scarborough on the Yorkshire coast. Preparation for this long walk occupied us and our walking efforts for much of the year. Would we manage it? In July I spent 13 days parallelling the walk (except for the bogs and the rain). I did both the distance and stated elevation gain so I was pretty confident that I could make it. As always, the proof is in the pudding. And, yes, we both made it the whole way. No slacking off and busing it. Just foot power. Would I do it again? Perhaps ... but not for quite a few years!!! There are so many other places I would like to walk through before I would consider a return to the Coast to Coast route.

I did do a number of longish walks around the Canberra area. There are walks around Lake Burley Griffin and, of course, Lake Tuggeranong. Both lakes were tackled a number of times. Then there were those long walks from Kingston, Manuka, the National Library and even the AIS home. We really are blessed with great walking terrain.

Many of my walking activities over the year can be found on this blog. If you want more information about any of the walks please contact me ... just use the comment area below to send a message.

Trevor and I have become quite keen wildlife spotters. Small birds have kept us fascinated. Just getting enough of a view to determine the distinguishing features has been challenging. Discussions about Weebills,  Variegated Wrens and other small birds became a feature of our post walk conversations.

The kangaroos that I encounter are always a pleasure. Many of the roos in the Mt Taylor reserve are very comfortable with humans as long as they, the humans, stick to their track. Here is a photo of a couple of roos just a metre or so from the track. The just watched me as i passed and didn't get too fussed when I stopped and took out the camera.



In the first half of December I felt off and this impacted my walking. I only logged 191km for the month with 2999m elevation gain.

Statistics for 2013

My walking and hiking activities came in at 3,934.82km ... that averages just on 10.8km per day across the 365 days of 2013. It probably explains why I have gone through a number of pairs of shoes. I was informed that my shoes were designed to do 600km so I should get quite a long life from them ... not at 10km a day!!! Fortunately, some of the walking was in hiking boots.

Overall, the elevation gain for the years was 65,507m. That is just on 180m elevation gain each day, on average.

There is a school of thought that each metre of elevation gain is the equivalent of a km of level walking. Perhaps.

And now for 2014

I haven't decided on this years challenge yet. Trevor and I will be doing a week's walking in Tasmania and I certainly need to think of a challenge for 2014 as a whole.


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