'WALK TO MORDOR' UPDATE: 721 miles down and 1,078 miles to go

I continued my (virtual) “Walk to Mordor” during the past week by logging 10 more miles since my last update. I jogged/walked five miles on Sunday and five miles on Wednesday. I intended to get in five more miles today, but bad weather kept me indoors. So far, I’ve logged 721 total miles on this virtual trip to Mount Doom, and I’ve got 1,078 more miles to go before I reach Mordor. All in all, I’ve completed about 40.1 percent of the total trip.

 

In relation to Frodo’s journey, I’m still on the seventeenth night of the trip past Rivendell, which is the night of Jan. 9-Jan. 10 on the Middle Earth calendar. I left off my last update on Mile 711, which was one mile from the start of the night’s journey. One mile later, at Mile 712, the road began to climb as it wound into the hills. At this point, the mountains began to draw closer.

 

I’ve covered nine miles since that point, and the next significant milestone comes four miles later, at Mile 725, when Frodo’s group, the Fellowship of the Ring, camps during the day of Jan. 10.

 

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 10 miles this week and 263 miles since the start of the calendar year. Today is the 25th Friday of the calendar year, so I’ve covered an average of 10.5 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.