Map My Ride (Walk) & fitbit

Many of you may be familiar with this cool application.  Here is my morning walking route:

I leave between 5:10-5:15 most mornings with 60lbs. in a Arcterxy RT35 and my Lowa Baffin Pro hiking boots.  The weight is two kettle bells, about 8-10 Vitamin Waters and all of winter accessories for Mount Adams.  Most days, I get the walk done in between 1:40 and 1:48 depending upon humidity, and exercises from the previous day.  The moon is still up and visible that early down in Memphis.  The day is just really beginning.  All the birds are getting going and it is a nice time to be out.

Monday was an unpleasant slog over the same terrain.  It took me nearly 10 minutes longer to complete the same route, without any appreciable reason why.  It was no more humid, windy, etc. than the prior week.  It might have been the 4:44 minutes of sleep.  I am tracking my sleep with fitbit another health technology application with a very cool feature:  I know what time I went to bed; my time to fall asleep; times awakened; time in bed, and actual sleep time.  I get a daily sleep efficiency score and can look at how I did each week against a peer group. 


The 60 lbs. has been an again / off again weight problem for my left knee.  That knee was the one that I was always hitting on the pommel horse in high school and freshman year in college, so it is more sensitive to strain.  When I get back in town later this week, I will downshift the weight for a least a week to see if I can keep it from stiffening up over this distance.  I am really not interested in limping the two miles to the start of the climb, all the way up to Lunch Counter, the summit, the descent and the return to trail head. I do not want to impact the team's performance because I have pursued some DUD behavior in my training and pushed too far, too fast.