'WALK TO MORDOR' UPDATE: 610 miles down and 1,189 miles to go

I continued my (virtual) “Walk to Mordor” during the past week by logging just four more miles since my last update. I jogged/walked four miles on Sunday, but a wide variety of factors (including bad weather, family errands, baseball games, softball games, work and water leaks) kept me from logging any more miles this week. So far, I’ve logged 610 total miles on this virtual trip to Mount Doom, and I’ve got 1,189 more miles to go before I reach Mordor. All in all, I’ve completed about 33.9 percent of the total trip.

 

In relation to Frodo’s journey, I’m on the tenth night of the trip past Rivendell, which is the night of Jan. 2-Jan. 3 on the Middle Earth calendar. I left off my last update on Mile 606, which was where Frodo’s group, the Fellowship of the Ring, was six miles from the start of their walk on Jan. 2. Two miles later, at Mile 608, the group reaches a hilltop and turns southeast.

 

I’ve covered two miles beyond this point, and the next significant milestone comes five miles later, at Mile 615, where the group camps during the day on Jan. 3. All told, the group covers 15 miles during this day.

 

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 four miles this week and 152 miles since the start of the calendar year. Today is the 17^th Friday of the calendar year, so I’ve covered an average of 8.94 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 nine more miles next week, and I’ll include all that in my update next week.