'WALK TO MORDOR' UPDATE: 1,219 miles down and 580 miles to go

I continued my (virtual) “Walk to Mordor” during the past week by logging 10 more miles since my last update. I walked/jogged five miles on Wednesday and five more miles today (Friday). So far, I’ve logged 1,219 total miles on this virtual trip to Mount Doom, and I’ve got 580 more miles to go before I reach Mordor. All in all, I’ve completed about 67.8 percent of the total trip.

 

In relation to Frodo’s journey, I’m on the seventh day of the trip past Lothlorien, which is Feb. 22 on the Middle Earth calendar. I left off my last update on Mile 1209, which was four miles past where Frodo’s group, the Fellowship of the Ring, made camp where they spent the daylight hours of Feb. 22. One mile later, at Mile 1210, the banks alongside the river began to grow stony and the hills north of the Emyn Muil begin to rise on the eastern shore.

 

I’ve traveled nine miles past that point, to Mile 1219, and the next significant miles stone will come one mile later, where hills will appear on the west as the river passes through “low crumbling cliffs, and chimneys with grey weathers stone dark with ivy.” In all, the group travels 50 miles in about 13 hours on Feb. 22.

 

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 10 more miles next week, and I’ll include all that in my update next week.