Remember back in 2016 when my run of injuries and medical complaints was bordering of farcical? No? Well no I suppose not, it is the funny posts that people seem to remember rather than the sad ones that make them well up. Anyhow, the culmination of these was a particularly nasty ankle sprain in Abu Dhabi that in truth has never quite healed, putting paid to what would almost certainly have been a promising career in competitive cycling. With this avenue of calorie-burning cruelly cut off, I resorted to only thing left that I could manage.
Walking.
Yes, that noblest and most intense of exercise regimes, striding up and down London's alpine-esque landscape, flab falling by the wayside with every step. Well, more gentle strolling really, mostly on Wanstead Flats. Anyway, whilst it might not have raised my heart rate much above whatever it is normally, what it lacked in aerobic it made up for in sheer distance. I walked 1764.32 miles over the course of the year. I know this as my pedometer was constantly on, and I made the effort, daily, to bung it on a spreadsheet so that I could retrieve all sorts of interesting facts. For instance the most distance I covered in a day was 17.57 miles, and the least was 0.07 miles or 162 steps. Not sure what I was doing that day. Dying in bed is the only reasonable explanation that fits, but actually I would have said that 2017 was amongst my healthiest. I had a couple of bouts of diverticulitis, but you cannot keep a good man down as they say, and I did not visit a doctor once, nor set in foot in any kind of medical facility, Frankly after 2016 I would have performed an amputation on myself rather than go to a hospital.
1764 miles is a long way. Setting off from London, it would have taken me further than Moscow. It is nearly twice as far as Rome, far further than Reykjavik, Helsinki, Athens, Istanbul or Marrakech. The approximate distance is from London to Rhodes, which probably takes about 4 hours to fly to. But it was in a failing cause as it is not quite five miles per day which was the goal I set myself. Maybe I was over-optimistic, maybe just stupid, but I did come pretty close. Those of you who, like me, have calculators on your desks will no doubt already have tapped this in and worked out that it is 4.83 miles per day. I don't think that's a bad effort at all, after all I am no spring chicken. And a lot of it will have been whilst weighed down with an enormous camera.....
Which is the point of this entire post. Well yes it would have been quicker to say that I went out on the patch today and took a pile of photographs but, well, you know how it is. I went here and I saw this. Not on this blog. Readers truly have to bear with me. So, as threatened yesterday I unpacked the camera for its first outing of 2018. At first it was dull as proverbial ditch-water, but I continued trotting round and eventually the low winter sun came out. Which enabled me to take these.
I can only imagine that you are desperate for news of my walking challenge. Well, there is news. BIG news. News of a round number. A LARGE round number. There have been ups and downs, three weeks of failing to make the distance for starters, but there have also been huge successes. One of these was last week, when on holiday I very nearly doubled my distance. This has ensured that whilst there might be bad weeks, that my average daily healthy mileage is above five. If I can keep that up I'll meet the annual goal at least. Anyway, on to the momentous figure - 300 miles. Surpassed at some point this morning whilst walking up and down the garden cleaning up after storm Doris.
There wasn't much to do - a few big sticks to tidy away, and the re-erection of all my bird feeders, all of which came down. No damage done, but at some point between Thursday and today the local foxes have decided that what the feeders really needed was to be decorated with poo. Why? The bird feeders had no territorial ambitions, they just happened to be blown onto the lawn. Thanks foxes. A nasty job, fox crap is pretty rancid at the best of times, but to be cleaning it off my bird feeders came low down of my list of things I wanted to be doing this weekend. Done now, but honestly. Yuck!
So back to walking, and another victory for foot power. Tony found a Med Gull on Wanstead Flats this morning, a decent bird over here. I trekked out to try and find it a little later, averting my eyes at the increasingly wanton destruction wrought by the Corporation of London. Scanned far more Gulls than is healthy but couldn't find it. Hey ho. Bob, Tony and I converged on the playing fields having collectively looked through nearly every group of Gulls on Wanstead Flats, and as is entirely normal for 9.30am started talking about Gin and Tonic instead. It's the demographic I think. Anyway, I had actually gone out this morning with the intention of buying bread in Leytonstone before being diverted in the opposite direction by larid news, so after a healthy discussion on when the first snifter of the day might occur, I bade farewell to the guys and started to head back.
Bob was incredulous! I had walked to the Alex?? Egad! Naturally he had driven over, and so offered me a lift back to far closer to the bakery. I thought about it I must admit, but I declined in the interests of my waistline and trotted off. A little later the merits of this strategy paid off when I bumped into the Med over on the Western Flats, probably the only spot nobody had checked. I didn't see one last year, so very pleasing, and with the once regular Valentine's Park bird likely playing a harp somewhere they have become far more difficult. I tried to call Bob a couple of times but there was no answer. Probably already back home and on the G&Ts......
So here it is, most lovely. This er "image" was actually taken with my phone through one barrel of my bins, which I didn't think was likely to work but has somehow produced an identifiable record shot.
I did eventually make it to the bakery, and £3.80 later was the proud owner of a sourdough loaf made with 30% rye. Fantastic. I also found a new fishmongers, so dinner at Chateau L this evening involves fresh shrimp and Red Snapper. I may even break out some white wine, but only after the Gin.
I can't cycle,and I can't run. I can just about still walk though so that is what I am going to do remain vaguely active. Four to five miles a day is the plan, which should hopefully prevent me from becoming hugely lardy during these dark winter months. More hugely lardy I mean. I don't have one of these fitness band things - they make you look like you're on day release - instead I can just use a little gizmo on my phone that somehow tracks the steps I have taken. I've measured the length of my average step, and so now this thing can tell me exactly how far I have toddled under my own steam. And of course part of the fun is that you can set targets, and everyone likes a goal. Think of it as a type of list....
Now ideally I wanted to set a daily target so that I could always feel progress, so I thought about a nice round number of 10,000 steps, which for me is the equivalent of about 4.6 miles. The trouble is that there are days where I simply won't be able to do that. The sun doesn't rise until 8am at the moment which is the time I need to be going to work, so birding in the morning is a non-starter. This leaves the commute and then Canary Wharf at lunch time, but I can say with near certainty that the nice block of time I have reserved in my calendar every day will instead be taken up by a very dull but no doubt highly critical meeting that I simply have to be in or the world will end. I have to be doing something whilst walking (like birding), I am not going to walk around in the dark at the end of the day for the sake of it, so instead I am setting a weekly target whereby I can make up any shortfall on other days. 4.6 miles a day adds up to 32.2 miles. That's a silly number, so I've increased it to 35 miles a week, or about 76,000 steps. This adds up over a year to 1,750 miles, which is another nice round number. I mean, wow, that's a seriously long way isn't it? London to Lanzarote. 67 marathons! Like all good intentions, I started on the first of January. A Sunday, so my walking week is Sunday to Sunday - leaving me Saturday to catch up if I've been rubbish during the week.
Here's a synopsis of the first week:
24,636 - Jan 1st year-listing on the patch, 57 species seen.
11,252 - Jan 2nd year-listing on the patch, 1 new species (a Linnet - there you go, birding content right there) added!!
9,609 - Jan 3rd - not too bad all things considered, going to Greenwich helped.
7,917 - Jan 4th - first day back at work, managed a lunchtime stroll and saw eight birds.
10,399 - Jan 5th - second day back at work, this is easy!
3,255 - Jan 6th - worked from home. This is almost entirely going up and down the stairs for cups of tea.
6,014 - Jan 7th, today so far (7pm)
73,082
All of this with a severed something-or-other ligament too, and four nearly-severed other ones, I am surprised my foot is still attached. Yes, I am a hero. Anyway, despite all the charging around Wanstead that first weekend I was still looking at a shortfall of around 9,000 steps that I needed to make up today. Luckily I am on the move - travelling again - so I expect I'll manage it. 3,000 to go as I type this and I still need to go and find a highly calorific dinner. Easy. But imagine if I had had two poor days like Jan 6th? I would really be struggling, probably needing to walk up and down a plane aisle about a hundred times. On holiday I walk loads, so I am expecting that I will start this new week very positively. Can I keep it going though, like I sustained my cycling to work regime hem hem?
Of course the real disappointment is that walking burns off practically no calories, only marginally more than breathing, or at least that is what I am led to understand. My average distance uses up around 500 calories. I can eat that many in about half a minute if I try really hard. One normal size double-decker (460 kcal) and half a biscuit. On a birding day out I reckon I must get through several thousand calories made up entirely from junk. But it is better than nothing, and it gets me moving and outside.
Rereading this I think I sound like an octagenerian.... Also I have never been able to run so my first sentence should be read with a pinch of salt.
New 'filtered' through today of a day-roosting Nightjar just down the road from me at the Middlesex Filter Beds. A local birder had spotted it whilst out jogging, and it had subsequently attracted quite a crowd of London birders, some of whom needed it for their all-important London lists. I didn't, having seen breeding birds in the Surrey sector last year, but I went anyway as I've never seen more than a silhouette at dusk. I've long hoped to come across a day-roosting bird, but I don't really bird the right habitat for that ever to be a possibility.
The bird was roosting in more-or-less plain view. Naturally it had chosen the exact spot where a clear photo was impossible, but I gave it a go anyway (as did Shaun, even though it clearly wasn't a Gull). A real treat for loads of local birders.
In other news I've birded the patch both yesterday and today, and come away with a full-fat patch tick in the shape of a Woodlark thanks to a timely text from Nick who had discovered it zipping round the grassy area of the Flats calling its head off. I hastened down there to find it still doing exactly that, though unfortunately those less quick off the mark were not as lucky. And then this morning I had the inspired idea to check the Park for a pair of Wigeon that were no longer on the Flats. I know, genius. And of course there they were. They take me to the astonishing total of 97 for the year, which is so piss poor I cannot even begin to tell you. Next year I promise I will make more of an effort.
And finally, hot off the press, I have just survived a fun-run. The other day I lost a huge number of BPs by driving off to Norfolk with both sets of car keys in my pocket. My rescue mission to Belgium with the second set of car keys is apparently long-forgotten, and as penance I was forced into a participating in a family fun-run in aid of Make Poverty History. I am, as you might imagine, an unexceptional runner, and the concept of the words fun and run in the same breath is entirely foreign to me. Nonetheless I whacked on a pair of trainers and set off the Park to meet the family, who were ahead of me due to the need to twitch the Nightjar. I made it to the start and picked up my number just as everyone all set off. Mrs L and the eldest set off together, and middle child went with a friend. Needless to say I didn't see them again until the finish. This left me with my youngest, now aged seven. She is not built for running, with very short legs at this point in her life, so we took it nice and slow - frankly this worked for me. How slow? Well, 5km in 45 minutes is how slow. Whereas young Master L finished in 29 minutes, Mrs L in 31, with Pie and her friend coming in at 38 minutes. So yes, we were last (as in last in our family of five, not last last - gratifyingly there are people out there less fit than I am), and no, it was not fun. But I did it, and I did not complain as much as I expected. And I am still alive, which is obviously a massive bonus, and by no means a guaranteed outcome as far as me running anywhere is concerned. Welcome to the Revolution.
