The Road goes ever on and on; Down from the door where it began;
Now far ahead the Road has gone; And I must follow, if I can;
Pursuing it with eager feet; Until it joins some larger way;
Where many paths and errands met; And whither then? I cannot say.

[JRR Tolkien, Lord of the Rings]

Friday 31 December 2010

2010: Illustrated

Late this afternoon (just after I got home and shed my very muddy boots and nearly as muddy trousers), I realised that it is the last day of the year, and my mind immediately turned to reviewing my final stats for the year.

I’m afraid that my obsessive behaviour extends beyond excessive planning and means that I collect all sorts of information and statistics about my walking activities. Unfortunately, it turns out that I’m not always entirely accurate, as I’ve just (crushingly) discovered that thanks to a typo that occurred when I split our K2CW mileages across the three months that the walk spanned, I didn’t exceed my previous highest annual mileage back in October. In fact, with that error corrected, it turns out that I only surpassed 2008’s mileage four miles before the end of this afternoon’s walk.

So, this year I walked 1813 miles. This is how that was split between the months:

image

No prizes for spotting in which month I reverted from a life of full-time leisuredom to being gainfully employed full-time!

Ascent, as measured on Anquet, came out at 208,000 feet, split out between the months as follows (noting that the highest ascent month was not the highest mileage month):

image

With Mick egging me on, a new graph was created (yep, so sad am I that the two above are automatically generated by my ‘walking log’ spreadsheet). This one shows the average ascent, in feet, per mile. Not sure that I draw any conclusions from this one at all, other than the months with low values are where I walked near to home a lot (i.e. in the land of flatness).

image

There’s no excuse for this level of shoe-related information, is there?

image

But, I’m British, so the weather is always a good topic. I already posted (back in May) the chart below, which refers to how much we needed to wear waterproofs on our K2CW jaunt:

image

But here’s what the weather was like for the other 105 walks (not including K2CW) that I took this year:

image

As for Mick, he wasn’t glued to my side for the entire year, and ended the year with 1464 miles on the odometer. Add to that the 503 miles he ran (before Achilles tendonitis hit) and he’s very gleeful that he covered more miles than I did this year. No pretty illustrations for Mick’s activities, though (which isn’t to say that I haven’t got graphs for Mick, just that I think that’s enough demonstration of my obsessiveness for one post).

14 comments:

  1. That is a busy year and one with lots of stats. I am much less organised than you. Have a great new year and beat the numbers this year.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHH!
    I shall now run to the Axe and Compass for a few Pints of thought-juice to wipe this nightmare from the grey matter!

    Brilliant, Shadwell!

    Word = "dynosere" (am I?)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Martin - at least by only beating my previous highest annual mileage by 4 miles, I've set myself an easier target for years to come!

    Alan - I knew you'd like that one!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I am off to the pub, right now! (with "Weird" Darren.)
    Happy New Year to you both and thanks for a great blogging year!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Wow. Gayle, that's astounding. I have my own obsessions (I like things alphabetical, size and or colour ordered) and I do have some walking statistics, but I'm going to have to up the anti!
    Love it.
    Happy New year, keep up this fab blog and hopefully, we might meet in 2011!

    ReplyDelete
  6. (I forgot the lists. I do like a good list. Shopping, packing, gear. It has to be in the right order, with the right writing implement and nobody else can write on it. At all. David likes to do that just to annoy me. He also calls me Schindler...)

    ReplyDelete
  7. That's very impressive, Gayle, but surely there should be graphs explaining the geographical split of your trips - mileage and ascent by County, perhaps. And a full analysis of your blogging activities.
    Without all that, and with no 'bagging' details given at all, you can hardly be accused of being obsessive...
    Have a Great 2011, both of you, with some fine trips.
    Martin and Sue

    ReplyDelete
  8. Louise - the bit about lists having to be made with the right writing implement and with no-one else allowed to mark it makes me feel much better about my own levels of organsation! We really must meet this year - if not in Braemar (are you going through Braemar?), then surely in Montrose?

    Martin - Eeek! You just made me realise that the 'summits' column of my spreadsheet is completely empty!

    ReplyDelete
  9. (Just to clarify - the summits column is empty due to a woeful failure to complete the data as the year went on, not because we didn't attain any summits this year. I'm just off to retrospectively rectify the omission.)

    ReplyDelete
  10. Oh my! This is so wonderfully anal ('scuse the expression). I must save this to pour over tomorrow when I am next of sound enough mind to enjoy it!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Get a grip, woman! You can't produce stats with no summits... And what's Helen going to 'pour' over the spreadsheet? A telepathic plague of locusts, perhaps?
    Back to the drawing board now. I'm up to TGOC day 5. (Bridge of Gaur)

    ReplyDelete
  12. Helen - I think you've hit the nail on the head there!

    Martin - I can only blame my omission on the fact that I collect miles, rather than summits. Whilst summit information had been omitted (23 was the answer), backpacking nights were all present and correct (47 (36 in Susie, 6 in Wendy, 1 in Vera, 4 in Connie). I could also report that the 'price per night' of Vera is now down to £2.61, and that Susie currently lies in second place for usage achieving best value for money, but that would be ridiculous information to have calculated, wouldn't it?!

    ReplyDelete
  13. Braemar? Oh yes indeedy! I'm having a day off there, to meet as many people as possible. Looking forward to it. I think Montrose is going to be too overwhelming to take anything in properly. (Overwhelming or a bit of a 'blur'? Hmmm, maybe!)
    Anyway, must get on with creating a new obsession, I've got to give it a go, haven't I? Looks fun!

    ReplyDelete
  14. You win, Gayle. I shall desist in my efforts to strain your spring. My stats will be very scant and prosaic in comparison with yours!

    ReplyDelete