Friday, March 25, 2016
'WALK TO MORDOR' UPDATE: 577 miles down and 1,222 miles to go
In
relation to Frodo’s journey, I’m on the eighth night of the trip past Rivendell,
which is the night of 2 Yule-Jan. 1 on the Middle Earth calendar. I left off my
last update on Mile 569, which was a mile from where Frodo’s group, the
Fellowship, camped at the end of Night 7. I reached that point on Sunday and
have traveled seven miles beyond that point, which puts me into Night 8. The
next significant milestone comes one mile later, at Mile 120, when the group
sees another snowcapped peak lying to the east.
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 119 miles since the start of the
calendar year. Today is the 13th Friday of the calendar year, so I’ve
covered an average of 9.1 miles per week up to this point.
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.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment