16-19

Mile 43.  It was a cool, misty afternoon.  Vastly different than the brilliant clouds of the day before.  Tortoise has had weary muscles for perhaps a week now, and the weather seemed as good an excuse as any to slow things down just a touch.  Turned out to be most enjoyable!  Maybe it was the singing part way through Rosemary Wixom's walking thought.  And also the cheery lights and welcoming brook through the rocks along the way, as shown above ...

Cheerio!

Zion's West Temple is straight ahead, just like every other day,
but today's it's playing hide-and-go-seek with the cloud cover

Today's walk was 2.52 miles and had a 4.7 tortoise rating earned by climbing 177 feet in the 1.26 mile uphill portion.  Average elevation was 3285. This walk burned 393 calories in 41:16 minutes, a pace of 16:23 minutes per mile.

Here are the overall stats so far for 2016:

43.12 miles walked which is 6.31% of Lou's 2016 goal of 683 miles.  His goal for this date is 34.80 total miles.

11:30:51 hours walked which is 5.50% of the 2016 goal (which is to walk 40 minutes a day on the 314 days other than Sunday in the year).  

3,241 total feet climbed in 2016.  Lou's goal is to climb one foot per mile more than he did in 2015, or 56 feet per mile.   In 43.1 miles so far this year, that goal works out to 2,415 feet, so he's doing well there.  

Then, there is the Wounded Duck challenge to consider:  To climb more than the 61,316 feet climbed in 2015 -- but in 40 minutes, rather than an hour daily.  To accomplish this, Tortoise would need to climb an average of 196 feet on each of the 314 walking days in 2016  ... assuming he misses no days at 6 days per week all 52 weeks (definitely quite an assumption!).  But playing along with Wounded Duck, this would mean climbing 3,136 feet in the 16 walking days so far in 2016.  Lou lost 19 feet today of his slim lead in this challenge.  Stay tuned to see how this works out as the year progresses ...

6,987 calories burned.

5.10% of the year has passed.

Lou has walked 217 consecutive non-Sundays since his 8 missed days May 2-11, Overall he has walked on 320 of the 329 non-Sundays in 2015-16, a 97.26% consistency rating.

The purpose of the percentages is to have a higher percentage of both distance and of time walked than of the year.  This tells Tortoise that he is on track.  And of course, he also wants to keep the Boredom Committee supplied with plenty of boring numbers so those good folks will be happy ...

And now for today's walking thought, part of a childhood song that still makes me happy that she had everyone sing partway through her talk ...

"Teach me to walk in the light of his love:
  Teach me to pray to my Father above;
  Teach me to know of the things that are right;
  Teach, teach me to walk in the light."

-- Rosemary M. Wixom, "Keeping Covenants Protects Us, Prepares Us, and Empowers Us", April 2014 LDS General Conference

If you click on the link, you can listen to the song starting just past 2:30 in the recording.  The tortoise is definitely smiling!