So that's about 15 minutes a mile; not too bad. Eventually I'll graduate to jogging, and do it in half the time. I also was carrying a light day pack, with canteen, and other gear, weighing between five and ten pounds. It was a really good hike, very quiet and scenic, with lots of wild undeveloped desert vegetation, along a new route I never hiked before, but will definitely be hiking it again.
Here are a few pictures from today's hike:
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| Next time I'll get a close up of the statue. |
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| Very cool. This was on somebody's front gate. |
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| Yes that is an observatory in the background. |
I wish I could tell you exactly where this is and give you names of streets and landmarks and parks I visit on my walks, but I can no longer do that because I've realized that it would compromise my privacy too much. Even though I'd like to think that my readers are good people who do not mean me any harm, the fact is it's impossible to know that for sure. And while it's not impossible to find me based on the information I've already provided, I really don't want to advertise my location, or make it any easier to be found than it already is. So unless I'm traveling far away from home through country I don't plan to ever return to again, something I plan on doing eventually, for the time being I will have to be somewhat vague in the descriptions of the places I visit.
Lately I've been really taking advantage of Google maps, using it to survey the land and calculate the distances of different routes to hike and bike. I've only been in my present location for less than a year now, and although I've lived in this city for a few years, I rarely ever came over to this side of town until I moved out here a few months ago. So like every hike I go on around here still feels like I'm going on this great adventure, with most of it being new and stimulating, with plenty of roads and trails to explore that I've never been down before.
I mentioned three posts down that I had been hiking at least a mile a day, and wanted to increase that to walking 3 to 5 miles a day. I just want to say that, I don't mean to suggest that this is all I've ever done. I have walked many more miles than that, have done a few 15 to 20 mile hikes in my life, but just not consistently. I know that I am capable of hiking twenty miles in a day, but just have never done so for multiple days in a row. What I'm trying to do is to gradually build up my mileage, to CONSISTENTLY hike or run five or more miles a day EVERYDAY, or at least five days a week, for as long as possible.
The reason for doing so, is not only to build up my general fitness, and to increase my mobility and lack of dependence on motor vehicles, but also because I would like to eventually do a long distance bicycle tour, and walk across the country, and maybe someday walk some of the famous pilgrimage trails around the world. I figure if I can't even walk five miles a day, five days a week, how in the world do I ever expect to walk or ride a bike thousands of miles?
I also have for a long time now wanted to be able to run at least five miles, and have not made much progress yet in that endeavor, but I figure if I am able to walk five or more miles consistently everyday for months, it shouldn't be too difficult to make the transition into running the same distance. So it's basically all preparation for all that.
