Walking

Those who know me, know I love to walk during lunch time.  I think I've been doing this ever since I started working in Cleveland, OH.  I enjoy the time away from the office.  I enjoy looking at people.  I enjoy the sites and sounds of the city.  For a few reasons I started to record my travels.  I record three items for each walk: 1) the amount of time. 2) the mileage and 3) the route.  Thanks to a Rand-McNally software package given to me by Sister #2 a few years ago, I was able to determine the mileage of New York City streets.  Every 20 blocks, north/south, is 1 mile.  This applies to midtown streets.  From 1st Avenue on the east side of Manhattan to 10th on the west side, is 1.5 miles Thanks to my SportLine 665 stopwatch I am able to calculate the amount of time down to the 100th of a second.  (Which brings up this philosophical question:  There are 60 minutes in an hour.  There are 60 seconds in a minute.  Why then do we use base 10 for counting portions of a second?)  The kids and I have used the stopwatch for many things including timing ourselves on a home-made obstacle course.  When Mom and The Donald were visiting I let the kids use the stopwatch on the way to one of the Roosevelt's homes.  K2 asked, "What if I break it?"  I answered, "It is impossible to break it."  Well wouldn't you know, one of the buttons fell out that very night.  God's retribution. Sportline said if the watch ever breaks send it back and they'll replace it.  So I did.  In the meantime I purchased the Sportline 220, a cheaper stopwatch, but just as good.  About a week ago I got the 665 back.  I highly recommend Sportline to everyone. Some data on the walks.  This graph below shows the mileage I walk since I began recording it in early June, through August 26, 2002.

The red line is the median value, 3.24 miles.  The straight lines between the boxes, on the median line, are the days I didn't walk.  I usually don't walk on the weekends, and there are some days during the week I fail to walk.  For instance, last Friday K2 visited, and I didn't walk.  The Friday before that K1 visited and I didn't walk that day either. The graph below shows the speed, in miles per hour for my lunch time walks.  Again, the red line is the median and the straight line between boxes are days I didn't walk.

The median value is 3.9 miles per hour and the days when I dip below 3.5 are days I just don't have the normal amount of energy.  Going over 4MPH is tough.

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