2000 miles with infinite MPG
 

Yup, I decided to save gas by only driving downhill. Works like a charm!

No, really. I have walked about 2000 miles in the last 7 months.
That's about 2 to 3 hours of solid paced walking. During weekends and holidays, like right now, I even extend my strolls around the block to 4 hours and 24 kilometer. I started the new year in style.

It all started when I got mini strokes last February. After some back and forth between my local doctor and the cardiologist the verdict was angina pectoris, and a angiograph revealed one coronary artery was 80-90% blocked. I got a stent and the attacks were gone.

Before that I had over 500 mini strokes. I started recording them in an attempt to correlate them to external factors like food or exercise. I found that pasta, alcohol and big meals in general increased the strokes, and so did lack of exercise - even though the strokes did occur often during exercising, exercising was the cure rather than the cause.

With the stent in place and a company fitness program to aid me developing healthy habits, I reduced my intake of processed foods and free sugars, started eating lots of vegetables and fruits, reduced meats and diary... and started walking.

So I've done about 2K miles (over 3000 kilometer) in the last 7 months.
I bought 4 pair of walking shoes, all of them are quite worn already, and I have a pair of older Nordic Walking shoes that I use for the lunch break walk at work which are in a continuous cycle of developing problems and getting repaired.

Meanwhile I walk for leisure mostly, but will also do shopping and such. I even got stuff from DIY shops on foot. I use a rucksack if needed and always have a pair of thin folding grocery bags on me; many a time I chanced upon a supermarket bargain and came home with the bag handles cutting the blood stream to my fingers ;)

And I drive less. When I bring my daughter to Scouting or table tennis practice I leave the car there and spend the time she's in walking, shopping, etc.
One day I might just walk to work for giggles, but that's over 20 miles... Maybe once this summer?

I walk a lot too, as much for doing my errands as recreation. People act like that's such an alien concept.

Good messages to prompt New Year's Resolutions!

Its not quite 0 mpg if you consider the amount of water you have to drink to replace water lost by sweating. Water losses via sweat probably isn't a big problem when walking in the cool climate of the Netherlands (I lived in Vaals in the 1970's) but when hiking here in the summer in South Carolina, I figure about 20 miles per gallon of water.

Walking and pulling a wagon was one way to do local errands in a one mile radius. A streamlined bicycle could be effective up to 20-25 miles.

It wasn't quite 0 mpg but I did not consume any gasoline and only a modest amount of alcohol ;)
I did burn calories of course, but that was the plan. My New Years resolution last year was to get back down to my pre-Christmas body weight of 90 kilograms. When I had the diagnosis and started walking in earnest I was already down to 87, but got it down to 77 by the end of summer and stayed there.

This years New Years resolution is to keep working on my health and to spend more time studying and practicing and doing fun things together. Mens sane in corpore sano.

Before the strokes I was very tired at times but did not know why and thought it could be psychic. The strokes and the stent showed otherwise.
Even so, we had a hard time last year with my father-in-law dying of cancer and troubles at my Asperger's son school, and of course my wife was very worried with me almost dying. But we got out of the tunnel and try now to enjoy life again.

I cycle a lot. I had a heart attack in 2014 and that served as a warning. I've arthritis in my big toe so running was out, so cycling it was.

I love it. Its enjoyable, mentally refreshing, and good for me. I started incorporating it into my life using the bike for work, errands and shopping, and have massively reduced car use. I'm never late home because traffic jams don't affect me, and the savings in fuel and maintenance are well worth having. I retire in 4 years, and although I live in the countryside I intend to be completely carless. I shall just do it, instead of making excuses like the great unwashed car driving public do.

Electric cars won't save the planet - walking and cycling might though.

Well done on your achievement.

I' m recovering from blood clots in the lungs and want to get my weight under control too. Stretching and cycling are key to my plans. Streamlining the city bike is a prime objective. We are in a hilly area so a triple crank gear set up is needed. A car is still needed here but changing the ratio of miles traveled is possible.

Wow, so what kind of aero mods did you do ?
Did you add an underbody cover to eliminate drag?

I added an underbody cover to reduce chances of arrest. (Also, it's really cold here- the cover reduces shrinkage!)

I used to cycle until I became increasingly wary of all the traffic zooming around me and began accumulating the inevitable multitude of incidences.

I finally concluded it was too dangerous a pursuit to justify if good health and longevity was the goal.

Walking seemed to be a better plan since it doesn't take as much territory and I can do it away from the street. Besides, the air seems a bit healthier.

Statistically speaking at least, lack of exercise is far more likely to kill you than cycling.

If "risk" is your concern then you've evaluated the entire scenario incorrectly.

What about pollutants in the air adding to the risk?

I cycle to and from work and the smell of exhaust fumes is nasty if I take my cycling mask off.

Well, there are choices.

Some of them avoid competing with multi-ton hard-bodied vehicles and their fumes on public streets.

Those are the ones I choose in my effort to evaluate the entire scenario correctly.

My profile picture is Miracle Max from "The Princess Bride" and I chose the picture after telling people that running made me feel mostly dead. I had not realized that life-threatening health problems were that common, but I am glad that you guys have been able to make improvements!

I went to the gym New Year's Day, but didn't go inside, I just walked home the long way. When I was going to bed on the second I realized with disappointment that I had not gone for a walk, besides walking to the end of the block and back twice with my brother, but I had around forty progress reports to write, and then apply to grad school by tonight.

Who sets a deadline at 10pm?

Oh nowadays with online applications they set a deadline and dismiss anyone who submitted 5 hours before the deadline. That is what one of my friends in HR told me. He said something in the line of “we want people that are well prepared in advance”.

I told him that was BS. Everyones time management algorithm is different.

Well, in my case going to work and avoiding exhaust fumes would mean taking the helicopter. Quite readily available for an average Joe :D

My commute is clean enough but over 20 miles is a bit of a stretch to walk or cycle.

I can understand avoiding the bicycle. I used to bike my commute. It involved a terribly-designed freeway/surface street interchange* and high-speed traffic whizzing by, nearly all of whom seemed to be on their cell phone. It definitely required an incredibly high awareness of everything going on around me (and the loudest bell I could find).

Though I quit riding in because our lunchroom is disgusting and the boss is a dick.

If you have the willpower to keep up the walking, great! Walking is not only good exercise, but I find it pretty therapeutic. If you need a bit of help, and don't mind the extra expense, get a dog. They'll encourage you to walk regularly, albeit with several stops for relief and sniffing things.

*All the traffic coming up the I-41 Northbound off-ramp to Eastbound Main Street immediately tries to cross 3 lanes to make a left onto Fountain Blvd, including many semi trucks. The design of the off-ramp means that their vehicle is already pointed East though, making it very difficult to see what's coming from the West. Cutoffs are a daily occurrence.

My tipping point in deciding that cycling amongst the traffic on public roads may not be as good as it feels was when I was passed by log trucks after seeing logs that had fallen off in the breakdown lane where I was biking.

Actually, I was riding illegally in that side lane, since technically riding bikes is supposed to be only done in the lanes of the regular roadway. No way I was going to do that.

So, I simply found other ways to keep active.

It's good to have choices.

I stayed with my sister for the first two months after I came home from Germany and I enjoyed waking up early, spending time with my nephew before school, and taking the dogs for a run.

Unfortunately, I let my then-girlfriend persuade me to stay up ridiculously late every night chatting on Skype. She was also a large contributor of me buying the Forester. I regret dating her more than most of the crazies I have taken out.

18 miles and a millipede
 

A new record today: 30 kilometer in one go!
That's about 18 miles and more feet than fit in all the shoes I own.

Colijnsplaat - Oosterscheldekering v.v. (the map is an approximation as it does not display 100% of the walking trails in the route); starting entirely along the coast and mostly inland on the back end.

I took my time at a leisurely 5.8 - 6 km/h so it took over 5 hours. But I could have kept on walking way past that, despite the wind picking up to gale force and some rain in the last few miles. Then, as the wind was dead south, I 'hid' behind the sea dike again on that stretch.

It was my second big walk this mini holiday, as the day before yesterday while my kids, wife and mother-in-law were having fun in Mini Mundi, a big indoor playground, I walked 25 km from Middelburg via Arnemuiden and Veere back to Middelburg. Though shorter than today it was much harder, with several bouts of hail and rain and strong wind all the time. I had an umbrella with me and it was very hard to keep on to it.
Hail precedes rain, then there's a couple of minutes with just wind. Hail Pluvius, rinse and repeat. No wonder thet for the whole 8 km of the unpaved walking stretch along the Canal through Walcheren (from Veere to Middelburg) the only oncoming 'traffic' was a hare!

Yesterday I was out for an hour only, but this time the wind was so strong that I could open nor close my umbrella, so when I finally got it open I left it like that. Two of the beams collapsed though allowing the edges to flap wildly, tearing holes in the fabric and spraying drip water around ... my gloves were soaked and at 3 degrees above freezing one hour was really the limit I could endure.

So today was a walk in the park really. Ah well, I now know I can do 30 km and still have adequate reserves. I may indeed do a commute on foot one day ;)

RedDevil - congrats on your healthy changes. (How did you know when you're having a mini stroke? Symptoms?)

A couple of summers ago I was on a bike ride and met a guy pulling a little wagon with a sign on it: "Walking the full length of the St. Lawrence River". 1197 km. We chatted for a while - recently retired civil servant, doing the walk in 3 or 4 'chunks' as his summer holiday/adventures. Very interesting guy.

One of my favourite blogs (not really a blog) is by Paul Salopek, an American journalist walking around the world, along the route of pre/historic human migration out of Africa all the way to South America. He's in year 6 or 7 now, and has been documenting it for National Geographic:
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/p...-of-eden-walk/ Really good writer.

Thank you!
I take my hat off (if I had one) to those great adventurers! I am fully aware my 30 km are nothing special, but I'm happy I can do this now. A year ago even 10 km would have been a stretch.

I got my first recent stroke roughly one year back while driving to one of our offices on the other side of the country for a meeting.
I had something similar 10-15 year ago, usually when working in the garden. It vanished and we thought it was an allergy. Now I'm not sure it was...

Anyway, I had a pressing pain on my chess but it was the middle of nowhere. I was in the slow lane (go figure!) and ready to pull over and hit the hazards if I would start feeling worse for it, but it was unchanging for 3 minutes and then suddenly disappeared in seconds.
I went to the meeting and drove home in the afternoon without trouble.

The next day at work it happened 4 times in a row with 10 minute intervals or so. I went to the doctor who started a ping-pong game with the cardiologist using me as the ball. At last an angiograph revealed the blockage and a stent was inserted that ended the attacks and colored the skin around the artery in my lower right arm in rainbow style for no less than 3 months. It was so pleasant that I vowed to do anything to prevent ever needing another stent.

So here I am, putting one foot ahead of the other and reversing it time and again.

The app with my Mi Band 4 step counter says I've taken 38012 steps today and adds 'Ahead of 100% of users'... You bet ;)