Great Wall of China – Fitbug Walking Finale

Well the latest Fitbug challenge placement details are in and it’s great news. I have completed the official Fitbug China challenge - Saturday’s 62,000 steps might have had a little something to do with it!!

To recap, the virtual Fitbug challenge was to cover 700,000 steps or 237 miles and burn 30,000 kcals in 8 weeks; the equivalent of actually walking the Great Wall of China. Can I just say now that the sights and vistas of the past eight weeks have been such, that it’s like I’ve never left London. Who knew rural China and London were one and the same?! ;-)

My own personal goal for this challenge was to get a sub 50th position, i.e. beat the minimum requirements for this challenge and then some. Admittedly it was looking decidedly unlikely I would come anywhere near this goal, especially considering my week 7 position where I was ranked 157th ;-((

Week 7

As ever, and as queen of the very last minute comebacks, latest stats show that I’ve climbed 100 places in the ranks – thanks Han for making us go the full distance on Saturday. I haven't quite made it into the sub 50th category and with a day and a half left until the challenge completion deadline, considering that I’m in the office or asleep for approximately 80% of the time remaining and that I still have a stiff back and I’m need to take it easy, I’ve got my work cut out even to maintain this position let alone complete the additional 30,000 steps plus required to climb just that little bit higher up the ranks.

Week 8

What a difference a week makes - 100 places infact! Woop, woop.

Wonder if it's within the rules to hire a professional walker to sub for me for the last few hours of this challenge - Han you keen?! xx

A parachute activity that keeps my feet ON the ground

Back to all things training tomorrow - CANNOT wait. All this gorgeous weather of late has made me bean keen to get outside. Now that I've said that, of course it will tip it down tomorrow - just wait ;-))

But to get me properly in the mood, I've been checking out different training activities for April when I came across this:

Parachute Running!!

How immense does this look? - I wanna try this so bad.  I would likely fall over but surely this is guaranteed to get me running faster? (We'll pretend for a sec that I can actually run more than 150 meters right now)

Totally excited and now buzzing to walk to work tomorrow - I have a sub 100 league position to somehow maintain in the three days remaining in week 5 of the Walk the Great Wall of China Fitbug challenge:

But tonight I'll be dreaming of one thing: Running 10km in 55 mins and releasing my parachute as I run the final leg - these babies only cost £30 but do they come in pink?! xx

Walking the Walk

I'm much better at "talking the talk" or rather blogging b%**%$@$, than I am at actually "walking the walk" - Case in point: see my last two posts.

But this week I set myself the challenge of walking 100,000 steps and making all three Training Sessions  and I know I'm going to hit my target even with two days of the week remaining. Oh yeah! That makes waking up at 4.30am this morning, to ensure I walked the 5.5 miles to work this morning in time for an horribly early meeting. just. slightly. more. worth. it.

Plus I'm starting to creep up Fitbug's Virtual Walking the Great Wall of China rankings - last week I was 156th of 419 participants, as of Tuesday I was:

Plus I have now booked my place on the 60km walking race on the 7th May. WOOP WOOP. Fortunately so too has Challenge Hannah so it should be LOTS of FUN as well as LOTS of PAIN - 13 hours of drama to be exact!! I am a little worried that Thursday's night training session exhausted Challenge Hannah's 3 joke repertoire so "vicious circle" might take on a whole different meaning come the 7th May - kidding Han ;-))

Plus since the 60km walk is only eight weeks away, I thought it was time to draw up...... :

An UBER Extreme (yet pocket sized!!) WALKING Training Schedule - What else?!

Yes I live a rock and roll lifestyle.  Right now I am sitting, blogging in my PJs, home alone on a Friday night waiting for my laundry to complete its cycle before I head to 'Bedfordshire' as Bridget Jones would say. Could I be any cooler - IMPOSSIBLE?! xx

p.s. I managed to lay off cake and chocolate today and instead indulged in porridge, a Pret croissant (I have been up since 4.30am!), salad with chicken, apple, salad (just salad leaves and a little pesto dressing) and chicken and chorizo pitta.  Impeccable behaviour until I ate 4 pieces of Vogel's Soya toast - but on a good note the loaf is no more - thankfully. Oops, also just remembered the mini jaffa cakes I ate on my way home. I have a totally selective food memory, unfortunately the scales are not so forgiving! So still a work-in-progress.

620, 987 steps to go...

.....to complete the Great Wall of China Challenge.

If Muhammad won't go to the mountain, the mountain will come to Muhammad

Well minus the 20,009 steps I completed yesterday – yup I walked home and then some last night. Coincidentally Challenge Hannah has also set off like a rocket and completed her first training walk – 6km!! I’m more than a little jealous, as when I started training for the Moonwalk many moons ago!! – I think I managed 2-3km in my first week!! Clearly Challenge Hannah is a NATURAL Athlete.

I should emphasise that Walking the Great Wall of China is a virtual FitBug Challenge. I got a few confused looks and queries as to when I was flying out to China, talking to colleagues yesterday.

I got my first weekly FitBug challenge stats yesterday, including my current ranking. Evidently this has raised my competitive hackles – cue yesterday’s 2 hour walk!!

Excuse the tres boring name - bug is work property and preregistered.

More importantly - investigation who is TeddyBug is a go!!

This week, the virtual FitBug challengers are tackling the section from Shandan to Youngchang and crossing the silk road enroute. Try as I might I still haven’t located this on a map yet but I have discovered that the Great Wall of China is actually a series of walls and that they don’t all interconnect, and that there are an unbelievable number of toilets along the route for tourists!!

The full distance of the Wall(s) from Shanhiguan to Lop Nur is 5500 miles/ 8851.8km but if you discount ditches and other geographical interruptions the actual wall is only 3889.5miles/ 6259.6km. Based on Lucinda’s Februlous performance, it would only take Lucinda 2 years, 7 months and 1 week to run the actual Great Walls of China – just a little challenge for you Luc – you could survey it whilst you’re there just to double check my accuracy ;-))

Don’t worry, my AWESOME! maths doesn’t stop here:

I worked out that based on my FitBug performance to date – I walk about 6000 steps an hour when I’m out and about (yup I’m fairly nippy when I want to be/ desperate for the loo). That means I have 104 hours of walking to complete this walking challenge in the next six weeks – meaning that I need to average about 2 hours walking a day/ 3-4 if I want to improve my ranking (who am I kidding – sub 50th here I come!!)

This couldn’t be more perfectly timed as I need to shed the Winter Walking Laziness and start seriously prepping for the 60km walk across the South Downs that, old and new Walking Challengers (including Challenge Hannah – see Sky’s the Limit Task 1 of 4), are undertaking on the 7th May 2011 – JUST NINE WEEKS AWAY. Eeeek.

Bashing out one final calculation – I estimated that based on my 74 cm stride (yup I’m short but perfectly formed ;-)) and that 60km = 6,000,000cm – I will need to take 81,081 steps to complete the distance.

Sidenote: Can you get RSI from walking?

Based on my current 6000 steps an hour rate - this walk will take me 13.5 hours. If only the course was the smooth and flat pavements of London. So adding in 2-4 hours for rough terrain, steep hills, rest breaks, eating breaks, loo breaks, getting lost, climbing even steeper hills, emergency blister stops, major strop ‘cannot take another step unless BRIBED with chocolate or a very hot man’ stops – we will likely be on the go for 16-18 hours.

Er – Han – I might have been a touch naïve when I said it would only take us 10 hours.
But at least I now understand why the expected finish race time is around 1am! xx

p.s. If Challenge Han/ the Hare haven’t read this - you are so ordered not to say ANYTHING!! til after they’re all signed up – mwahaha. After all my maths is notoriously rubbish ;-)

Sunday Stepping Success

I am writing this lying on my bedroom carpet floor, in the manner of my teenage self. It's the best way of snuggling up to the radiator and keeping warm - today's shock exertions has clearly put my body into shock!!

(As a teen, I spent my life lying belly down on my bedroom carpet either reading or listening to my 'Sony Walkman' - God that reference makes me PREHISTORIC!!)

Anywho - today has been a success:

• Run:  BIG TICK - In the end I jogged 5km with Sunday Runners: AJ and Kaye (Kaye's Paris Half Marathon is now just a week away so Kaye is in FINE form!!) Then I walked the remaining 5km solo, whilst Kaye legged it - quite right too!! But not bad for my first run in two weeks.

We actually reversed the route - MORE DOWNHILLS!!

Yup - I'm still a jog/walker though some of the dips are traffic light stops - pinky swear!!

Proof I walked the second 5km in 42 mins

• Steps: Achieved just under 30,000 steps in total today!!!!!!!

Today's steps - hour by hour

February Fitbug Step Tracker
Key: Pink = Aerobic and Total Step Targets met
Grey = Targets not met
Blue = Aerobic Target met only
Black Line = Daily Total Step Target required to complete the Virtual Wall of China
 Blue Line = Daily Aerobic Step Target (i.e. staying active for over 10 mins at a time)

As you can see, I made a big upswing in my walking efforts today - that and I didn't have time to go home between Sunday Run Club and meeting friends for lunch in South Kensington, so I just kept on walking and walking. Hopefully this signals the return of 'The Walking Machine'. 

All that walking proved to be more than worth it - my gnocci was particularly gnice (the convo was also very gnice girlies - THANK YOU)!! Plus I must have burned off that yummy lunch, just check out the calories I've burnt over the last few weeks (according to FitBug). Today is my best day yet: 1760 kcals ANNIHILATED - just as well - see below!!

February Fitbug Kcal Tracker

• Chocolate consumption: One Hummingbird Cupcake. In truth Lola's Cupcakes are better.      

N.B. I haven't eaten a Lola Cupcake in about 6 months - WOOOOOOOOOOOOP I do possess a smidgeon of self-control!! Plus this morning's very instructional lecture from AJ on the correct Cream Egg/ chocolate consumption is still in the forefront of my mind!! I daren't disobey AJ - for a week at least!! xx

Must go - typing whilst lying on the floor is giving me pins and needles and a stiff neck - my teen self was evidently more supple than my current frame!! xx

Fitbug or rather Fatbug!!

Well I'm not quite back to normal but I'm getting there: My knees only started aching after walking 4km of the 8km I covered this morning so that's a great sign.  I'm hoping I'll be back doing some much needed sweaty cardio this weekend, pretty please. I promise not to go too crazy on my beloved knees.

But since I don't have training to keep me occupied in the evenings, I have found that my old friend the Snack Monster has returned, every night without fail.  Not great. Not great at all. To prevent any more snacking, for tonight at least, I decided to complete my FitBug profile for today and quantify the exact damage of all this mindless eating.

For those that haven't heard about FitBug - FitBug is essentially a very precise pedometer designed to track your kcals expended, but the extra bells and whistles, such as the FitBug website that is also part of the package, track your calorie and nutritional intake alongside. FitBug set you weekly goals to achieve, monitor your progress and also run regular competitions and leagues to motivate you to increase your fitness and daily exercise. The current virtual FitBug challenge is "Walking the Great Wall of China" - 237 miles in 8 weeks - Bring. It. On. As you know, I LOVE a challenge, ergo, I'm so far loving the FitBug.

Basically you wear your FitBug device all day long - plug it in to your laptop etc to download the data onto your internet FitBug profile and input what you ate for the day by selecting your food from the database or by building your own recipe from ingredients. FitBug works out all the kcals and nutritional info for you, it won't, however, actually doing the cooking - for that I apparently need a house husband!!

Plus any foods you eat frequently - eg porridge, sushi, chocolate, salmon, pasta, porridge, sushi etc can be stored as favourites, to save having to keep searching the database. In total the whole process literally takes about 2 mins and it's completely PAINLESS, unlike squat jumps!

My FitBug still needs to run a few more days before it can accurately determine exactly how much of a pig I REALLY am! it can set my first goals for number of kcals in and daily number of steps to achieve. Plus you don't have to walk/run all the time, you can substitute steps for swimming, circuits, anything really - just input the details and the FitBug adds this to your daily tally.

Well this was me today:

My kcals in and kcals out are not quite the right way round for the magic weight loss equation I think.

As you can see for dinner, I basically consumed a hippo, it's baby, the entire contents of the fridge, and then some.  Actually I didn't eat quite that much but I did eat 90% junk today. BAD, BAD, BAD - I really, really must go food shopping tomorrow, so please let my bank card cooperate.

{My second discovery of the day was that being made redundant means that your Bank card stops working 10 days before the end of the month rather than 3 days - or is that just me?! Regardless I'm a Waitrose/ M&S girl no longer - instead I'm off to the Pound Shop/Asda for some more affordable and most importantly LESS calorific fare.}

If you're interested, here's the gruesome details of what I did actually eat today - the sweet tooth is back with avengeance:

I've never really been into counting calories as it's just been too much hassle before tools like this emerged. But since I have a FitBug for a free trail period (one good thing has come out of my job recently!!), I'm determined to make the most of it. 

BUT most of all, I'm D.E.T.E.R.M.I.N.E.D. to cut the junk food and the CHOCOLATE out my diet - really THE STORY OF MY LIFE ;-)) xx