'WALK TO MORDOR' UPDATE: 522 miles down and 1,277 miles to go

I continued my (virtual) “Walk to Mordor” during the past week by logging eight more miles since my last update. I walked/jogged five miles on Sunday and three more miles on Wednesday. So far, I’ve logged 522 total miles on this virtual trip to Mount Doom, and I’ve got 1,277 more miles to go before I reach Mordor. All in all, I’ve completed about 29.0 percent of the total trip.

 

In relation to Frodo’s journey, I’m on the fourth night of the trip past Rivendell, which is the night of Dec. 28-Dec. 29 on the Middle Earth calendar. I left off my last update on Mile 514, which was four miles into this night of the journey. Two miles later, at Mile 516, the group reached a small stream and began following it west.

 

Two miles later, at Mile 516, the group left the streambed, and I’ve covered four miles passed that point. The next significant milestone comes three miles later, at Mile 519, where the paths become few and winding and the group camps during the day of Dec. 29.

 

So far, I’m on track to travel the 462 miles from Rivendell to Lothlorien, which is the forest realm of the Elves, between Rivendell and Mordor, within the 2016 calendar year. To pull this off in a year’s time, I’ve got to travel at least 8.9 miles per week, that is, a little more than a mile a day. So far, so good, since I covered a total of eight miles this week and 64 miles since the start of the calendar year.

 

For those of you reading this for the first time, I began this “Walk to Mordor” fitness challenge on Jan. 1, 2015. Using a book called “The Atlas of Middle-Earth” by Karen Wynn Fonstad, fans of “The Lord of the Rings” created this challenge by mapping out Frodo’s fictional trek to Mordor, calculating the total distance at 1,799 miles. They also used the original "Lord of the Rings" text to outline the journey, so you can follow their route by keeping up with your total mileage.

 

The folks who worked out the nuts and bolts of this virtual journey have divided it into four parts. It’s 458 miles from Hobbiton to Rivendell, 462 miles from Rivendell through Moria to Lothlorien, 389 miles from Lothlorien down the Anduin to Rauros Falls and 470 miles from Rauros to Mount Doom. (Those locations should sound very familiar to “Lord of the Rings” fans.) The hobbits averaged 18 miles a day, but if you walk (or jog, as I sometimes do) five miles a day, it’s possible to cover 1,799 miles in a year.

 

If you’re interested in learning more about the “Walk to Mordor Challenge,” I suggest you check out two Web sites, http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2012/07/23/walking/ and http://home.insightbb.com/~eowynchallenge/. Both of these sites provide a ton of details about the challenge, including how to get started.

 

In the end, check back next Friday for another update and to see how much closer I am to Mordor. I hope to knock out at least 13 more miles next week, and I’ll include all that in my update next week.