Sunday, September 03, 2006

8/19/2006 - Testing my mettle (Jimmy Fund Prep)

On some days, you can either blog or you can walk.

Today (9/3/2006, actually) was my "come-to-Moses" day. The stars were aligned perfectly for walking, so I was going to see just how likely a 26.2 mile hike was for me.

The good news. I put in a lot of footage without having to slow down. Over the course of 24 hours, I put up close to 48,000 steps (20.5-22.5 miles). Most of that was between 7:30AM and 4:30PM and most of that was either 7:30-11:00 or 3-4:30. In between 11 and 3 I met my family (and Silver) for lunch and light walking around Copley.

I'm guessing that the Jimmy Fund walk will be between 57,000 and 60,000 steps, so it's not a big leap from 48k to, say, 58k.

The bad news. Things went far more slowly than I had hoped. My plan is to start out from Hopkinton at 5:30am and meet up with my teammates (at mile 13) around 9am. It seems very unlikely that I can do 13 miles in 3.5 hours. Time for plan B.

The day was also a useful test of my MP3 plan. As you probably don't know, I usually use my cell phone as an MP3 player, but it can only handle about 3 hours of playing time. If I use it, I will lose the ability to call the wife and say "my feet hurt." We can't have that. So I dusted off my old Arcos MP3 player to see if it still worked.

The good news. It works! I was able to install the software on our new computer and move several podcasts to it. I was worried that it wouldn't handle big files so well, but one of the files was more than 50Mb, no problem. I also tried using my non-noise cancelling headphones. I often couldn't understand what I has listening to, but it was good enough. And no ear-pain, which is the goal.

The bad news. I now remember that my old MP3's rechargable battery was going south when I originally switched to the phone. Instead of the 6 hours it claims to provide, I get more like 2.5. Well, that's probably good enough. It will get me most of the way to my teammates, and I can always supplement from the phone.

13,000 so-so steps today. Cheers,