How far did you walk, jog, or run?

If you are walking, jogging, or running there are a few great ways to find out how far you went.

1.  I think this website is great!  http://www.walkjogrun.net/index.cfm
Kris and I took Anna to the Webster Memorial Day Parade on Monday.  We do not live far from the Village of Webster so we walked up pushing Anna in the jogging stroller.  According to the mapped route we traveled 3.25 miles.  This is a great tool to determine your distance if you do not have a pedometer and you travel on roads. This website also allows you to save your own routes and view routes from other people.

2. Using a pedometer.
Wikipedia defines a pedometer as:

A pedometer  or step counter is a device, in modern times usually portable and electronic or electromechanical, that counts each step a person takes by detecting the motion of their hips. Because the distance of each person’s step varies, an informal calibration performed by the user is required if the distance in yards or miles is desired.

The recent guidelines for a walking program is 10,000 steps per day. I know 10,000 steps sounds like a lot, but for most people this 30-60 minutes of walking. Or you can think of it this wasy…the average person’s stride length is approximately 2′6″ feet long (mine is 2′2″) so it takes just over 2,000 steps to walk one mile, and 10,000 steps is about 5 miles. 
If you are sedentary you are probably walking 1,000 to 3,000 steps/day (for the average person that is 0.5-1.4 miles). To reach the 10,000 steps/day you will need to walk with intent and increase your steps gradually.  It would be reasonable to increase your steps each week by 500 steps/day (for the average person that equals 0.2 miles).  If you are currently recording 3,000 steps/day, next week increase to 3,500 steps/day, the following week 4,000 steps/day and contuniue adding 500 steps until you reach 10,000 steps/day.

Today a friend and I took Anna to walk North Ponds Park in Webster. Anna had the luxury of riding in a jogging stroller while we walked around the paved walking/biking trail 4 times.  I wore a pedometer on this trip and recorded 8,336 steps.  For my stride length of 2′2″ this converts to 3.4 miles.  This was a great 45 minutes walk with a friend!  

Click Here for some help selecting a peometer for yourself. I have a few pedometers some more expensive than others. Today I used a small and simple pedometer from Target’s $1.00 section.