Pedometers and walking. Again.
I tried to find a photo from our many walks in Pt. Pinole (it's germaine to today's post). Couldn't. So instead, here's a photo from a park very near Pt. Pinole. This was taken before Easter, and I'm thinking this a duck/goose nest. Just not a very good one.
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Now, although I am madly in love with my pedometer, today I am going to make a recommendation for you all to also give Gmaps-Pedometer a try ( Ok, try it if you live in the US. It's not set up for the whole world yet.).
Why? Especially why if I'm wearing a wondering accurate pedometer? A couple reasons.
First. Say you wish to plan a new walk. You want to start at your house, walk around the neighborhood, and have a distance of 2 miles. Gmaps lets you do this. You start the trip at your house, and click and move the route along. Watch the distance add up. If you're happy with an "out and back" walk, just find the half-way distance (in this example, 1 mile) and click. Or you can see the streets and figure out your own loop walk. This is mainly how I use this program.. to find a route that meets specific distance settings.
Second. It calculates calories. Yeah, my pedometer does that too. So I can use one to check the other for the base calories. But gmaps knows the elevation changes that my Omron doesn't and calculates the extra calories expended because of walking up and down hill.
Third. And this important to me. Remember I live in the bay area. Most of the walks I take have some elevation in them. And this program will calculate the elevation changes. To me, this is the way cool part. When I'm huffing and puffing, I can tell myself: You're walking up 25 stories! You should be a little winded.
If you need to see some of this in action, I've put in a walk we take at Pt. Pinole. (see, I said this park was pertinent). It's the outer paths in the park, very pretty. Relatively flat as my walks tend to go. Click on the link and play with this as I show you. NOTE: you can move your viewing around by clicking and dragging with your mouse on the map. Another cool feature.
Looking at this mapped out route, I know the walk is just over 4 miles.
Now click on: turn on mile markers, and each mile post along the way appears. Very nice for mentally planning potential turn around points/ water break points.
Click to Turn On Calorie Counter. When I put in 150, it tells me that I've burned 460.8 calories on this walk.
Click to Turn On Elevation (small). Reading the graph, in the first mile I went 25 feet and back down... the second mile up almost 60 feet, stayed there for most of mile and then back down. Was near sea level for the third mile, then elevated to 50 feet (again) in the last mile before I returned the end.
Whatcha Doing Today? Working on the garden path.
Reading? The latest THREADS.
Steps: Yes. So far today (and it's just noon), 6102 total and 3556 aerobic.
What's For Dinner, Deb?That's right.. I'm cooking. Pork cutlets, a green veggie, applesauce. (doesn't that sound very 1950s? except that then it would have to be canned green beans.)
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