The ways I choose to get regular exercise are hiking and biking. I never could stand “going to the gym” and doing an indoor workout. It always seemed to me that there was little point in getting in the car, driving somewhere, parking, going inside to exercise on machines, getting all sweaty, then back in the car, and driving home again. And running was always hard on my feet and knees, so although I did run for a few years (up and down San Francisco hills), it didn’t really last.
I find that hiking 10+ miles with a 20-lb pack gives me an opportunity to clear my mind for 3 hours, see some of the city (or the surrounding territory), work off a thousand or so calories, take a few interesting photos, and see people doing a lot of silly things.
Read more about that iPhone app EveryTrail…
This iPhone app EveryTrail goofed me up last weekend when I hiked the Headlands in Marin County and it completely lost all of my data – after 10 miles of recording. So today I did another urban hike, down to the Ferry Building, around the Embarcadero to near Pier 39, then back down Van Ness Avenue and up Market Street to my starting point. This time its recording was quite good! There were a few of the usual GPS glitches (it’s hard for the GPS to see enough satellites in an urban setting with hills and skyscrapers around), but by and large it recorded my track pretty well.
I’m comparing the distances against the Nike Plus Sportband, and the EveryTrail app always reads about 10% higher than the Sportband, so I’m not sure which one to believe yet. I think that probably half of the difference is due to GPS inaccuracies, so I’d say that the Sportband (for me) records about 5% lower than my actual mileage, and EveryTrail probably records 5% higher than actual.
The EveryTrail widget (see below) is giving me a little trouble, but try clicking “Full” and then double-click to zoom in on San Francisco and you’ll see how it recorded my route. There’s gotta be a way to get the widget to zoom in automatically, but I haven’t figured it out yet, sorry.
(If you have Google Earth on your computer, you can download this KML file and see my trip in Google Earth – I absolutely love this!)
SF loop
Widget powered by EveryTrail: GPS Geotagging
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