Discussion Board

Me too! I love to walk and would love to be part of your virtual walking group. Sounds like fun!

This might be a useful link as it contains a number of tools for tracking one's walking.

http://walking.about.com/cs/measure/a/b ... k.htm?nl=1

OK folks, this is starting to come together in my brain. I’ll probably get it started up next week to celebrate my one year anniversary on McDougall. Which forum do you think the thread should live in? Exercise or MWL or somewhere else?
Letha

Exercise forum is best for this. After all, it is exercise.

I agree with Daffodil, Exercise is the best forum.

I vote for exercise forum. I think that it will be great to try to keep it as simple as the MWL threads. People will come and go, and big exercises will encourage others just as big losers do on the MWL thread! Also, the email idea might not work because people still have some anonymity here that they wouldn't have with email. I'm ready to start as soon as you set it up, Letha! I already know that this will help us all so much!! Take care, LauraA

Right here is fine, Letha.

I'm really looking forward to logging my times/simulated distances here every day.

Looking forward to the start. Should be a hoot.

This sounds like a great idea! I definitely need some encouragement in the exercise department. Plus I love hiking, even the virtual kind.

I think the American Discovery Trail is a great place to start. I would like to suggest the Appalachian Trail for a future hike. I've always wanted to hike it. Someday...someday...

And of course after the Appalachian Trail, there's the rest of the Triple Crown:

http://gorp.away.com/gorp/activity/hiki ... iplecr.htm

I also agree that one big group is better. When many people are able to participate, we will be zipping across the continent, but even if a lot of people are out, there will still be enough participants to keep us moving (in more ways than one).

I love this idea, and I'm in! I love the idea of doing the American Discovery Trail, too -- everyone can stop by my house for a virtual McDougall lunch in Maryland!

I think Letha is right that we should do it like the MWL thread, which has been so successful -- one big group, with people reporting their mileage once a week. And counting minutes of exercise as miles is a great idea too. That's basically how the Leslie Sansone DVDs work. Depending on how strenuous the workout is, on her DVDs a mile takes anywhere from 12 to 15 minutes. It sounds like the group is leaning toward saying 10 minutes=1 mile, which is fine too (I tend to think in terms of 15 minutes being a mile, because it takes me at least that long to walk an actual mile outside). We should do whatever will encourage the largest possible number of people to participate.

toadfood-probably most walkers would be about a 15 minute mile - or even slower. Don't forget, though, you'll also have runners and bikers! I think that anything that Letha sets for the time will work out, and we'll all get used to it. I can't wait! Take care, LauraA

Oh, I agree, Laura -- whatever makes it simple for people is great.

10 minutes per mile is very simple and easy to convert, even down to intervals of 30 seconds, just by taking the minutes and sliding a decimal point over one place. Also, this gives the slower people like me the feeling of what it will be like when we can actually start jogging at a real 6 mph outside. It might be true that many of us are closer to 4 mph or even less than that, but at one mile per 15 minutes it gets a lot harder to turn say, 19 minutes before resting into an easy figure. 1.9 miles at 10 miles/minute is simpler to compute and add up than 1.27 miles (rounded from 1.266666 repeating) at 15 miles/minute.

After all, we don't want Letha sitting there looking like @^@ at her computer monitor at the end of every week, do we?

Thanks for all your input everyone. It really helped me think through the possibilities. We now have a virtual walking thread in the Exercise forum. Hope to see you all over there.
Letha

http://www.drmcdougall.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=13008

starting tonight, a 30 minute walk. No excuses. 8:00 to 8:30 every evening, period. It takes me actually about 20 minutes to walk one mile, so I'll measure by the 20 minutes mark.

I'll report in briefly each day. Did it already start? Is there a virtual place where we can mark our progress?

blessings, HeidiW