Friday, February 26, 2016
'WALK TO MORDOR' UPDATE: 535 miles down and 1,264 miles to go
In
relation to Frodo’s journey, I’m on the fifth night of the trip past Rivendell,
which is the night of Dec. 29-Dec. 30 on the Middle Earth calendar. I left off
my last update on Mile 522, which was three miles from where the Fellowship
camps during the day of Dec. 29.
I
reached that point, Mile 525, on Sunday. The paths are this point are few and
winding and the group decides to camp here throughout the day on Dec. 29. The
camp breaks camp when the sun goes down and continues to travel by night on
what is Night Five of this leg of the journey.
Three
miles from this point, at Mile 528, the group reaches the top of a rise and
begins to angle southeast. In all on Night Five, the group covers a total of 15
miles and I’ve covered about seven miles of that distances. The next
significant milestone comes at Mile 540, where the group camps in a thicket of
thorn bushes during the day of Dec. 30.
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 13 miles this week and 77 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.
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