In a recent posting from Nerd Fitness, which you can find here... a wonderful challenge is listed. This is, the walk to Mordor challenge. You may stop reading here if nerd-dom makes you ill, but if you are intrigued and also enjoy walking, do read on! This link is to a fitness blog (not mine), so hopefully it is relevant enough to be appropriate to post here:
http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2012/07/23/walking/
I've been a pretty big Tolkien nerd for the past 10 years or so, starting when I saw the movies in high school and then managed to read most every piece of work that the man had written. Good thing I was in high school at the time because I had the time to take down such an undertaking. But this posting intrigued me!
Someone figured out that it was about
1779 miles from Bag End to Mordor. The blog post also lists other exciting numbers like the number of miles it took for the party to get back to Hobbiton, as well as the Grey Havens. If you're interested in a shorter trip I think you can rummage around and find some info about it.
So I am going to take the challenge... I started walking again for the past 4 days and I've racked up a whopping 12 miles. If you click on the links that take you to the breakdown of miles(
http://home.insightbb.com/~eowynchal...d/bag_end.html), this only takes me out of Hobbiton, over the Brandywine Bridge, and into the Green Hill Country, just past where Sam and Frodo stop to eat some supper on the first night of the quest. It took me 4 days to do what they did in 3 hours!
Anyway, I think I shall take the challenge!
I'm no Frodo... apparently the hobbit walked 18 miles the first night. Walking 5 miles a day, it would take just under a year to complete the mission. I haven't worked up to 5 miles a day yet. I've been doing between 2-4, though I'm hoping to bring that up to 5 over the next few weeks.
Would anyone else like to join the extreme hobbit to Mordor challenge? You could throw a doughnut off a cliff or something to celebrate at the end. In fact, if you make it to the end of this, you can even eat the doughnut to celebrate!
So start logging your miles! Set a goal for how long you would like to take to get there, or how many miles a day you will start with, and we can become our own little Fellowship. You can do the challenge any way you like, as long as you can record distance (biking, walking, running, treadmill, eliptical, swimming... whatever you like to do!)