Gratuitous Graphs of 2013

The walking record of 2013 has been so disappointing that I wasn’t going to bother with a round-up of the year’s stats. However, the graphs are all generated, so here are just a small smattering of illustrations of how the year shaped up.

I only walked 666 miles in 2013 (involving 17 nights in a tent, 32 nights in Colin and 31 summits of one kind or another). That’s my lowest mileage year since I gave up full-time employment in 2007 (although, in my defence, this is also the first year since I gave up full-time employment that I have found myself employed for the entire calendar year). This is how 2013 stacked up with previous years:

Here is how the mileage stacked up month-by-month:

And let’s not forget the ascent figures (I don’t have annual comparisons, but I’m sure that this year saw more ascent-per-mile than the norm):

Picking out a couple of the highlights of 2013’s stats, February (of which we spent the majority holidaying in Scotland) was a pretty good month when compared with previous years:

August is a month when typically the miles start to fall drastically, but this year was different. The total number of miles for the month may not have been large, but it was my best August on record:

This was a year with an incredibly nice summer and, thanks to Mick’s outings on Pennine Way (where I went and joined him at the end of each week), I got to enjoy some of the hot sunshine. Even so, my claims at having become a fair-weather walker weren’t entirely borne out by the stats:

In case the ink isn’t showing up against the background, the dark purple segment is ‘snow’.

My resolution for 2013 was that I wasn’t going to buy any new walking shoes, but rather would make inroads into wearing out some of my existing extensive collection. This one illustrates the shoes I favoured this year:

The number after the description denotes how many of that shoe I’ve owned (so, for example, I’m on my sixth pair of Terrocs)

I kept to my resolution and despite being sorely tempted by some good offers, I didn’t add any new footwear* to the collection and I have ended the year with a couple of pairs fewer than I started. The resolution is not going to be extended; most of my shoes are very close to the end of their useful lives and aren’t fit for the lengths of walk I have pencilled in for next year.

I always suspected that this year was going to be a bit of a walking write-off, so I didn’t set myself a mileage target. For next year I’m going to be bold (just by the fact that I’m publishing a target) but modest (in the size of that target). In 2014 I’m aiming for 1100 miles, with a secret (but perhaps unrealistic) aspiration to break 1825 again.

(* I’m not counting socks as ‘footwear’ even though they clearly are. I saw an absolutely bargain on x-socks earlier in the year, just a couple of weeks after I had been bemoaning the sorry, worn-out state of my collection, and took advantage of the bargain.)