Reflections on 2017

The change of the year is always a time for reflection and for looking forward. So every year at this time, I review my walking activities for the previous year, and I look forward to the year ahead. In this posting, I will look back at 2017.

In an earlier posting, I wrote about the importance of setting goals and measuring activity. It is important to have a well-defined target by which success can be measured. And failure too, if that is the outcome.

Early in 2017, I set myself two objectives for the year: I would walk six million steps, and I would walk part of the pilgrimage route towards Santiago, specifically a French section from the Swiss border to the town of Le Puy en Velay. I remarked to a friend that I would consider the year a failure in terms of my walking if I failed to achieve both of these. With that, I had nailed my colours to the mast. I would have to do both, or the year would be a failure. So now, as we go into 2018, I can look back and see how well I did.

In a way, the two objectives were linked. If I completed the walk in France, it would go a long way towards meeting the goal of six million steps for the year. But it would be possible to complete the six million steps without completing the walk in France. The two are related, but not in a simple way.

In terms of the first one, the six million steps, I achieved that. I actually completed that goal on December 8^th, taking my six millionth step somewhere in the Klybeck area of Basel. In terms of the total for the year, I then ran into a problem. Firstly, the December weather is not conducive to walking, and my daily count went down significantly in the second half of the month. Secondly, my phone, which measures my daily step count chose the end of December to revise the app that does the measurement. That resulted in a loss of data. As a result the total recorded steps for the year is actually an understatement of the actual amount. But the total recorded steps are 6,240,638. So I can say that the first goal was comfortably met.

Anyone who has read my various postings here will have noticed my accounts of my walks in France. I completed that walk in September-October.

And there are added bonuses. I completed the Aargauer Weg in Switzerland. I walked one stage of the Via Alpina in Switzerland. And so on.

So as I sit here in the cold and rain of the Swiss winter, I can look back and say that yes, 2017 was a good year.

PS: My thanks and acknowledgements to Dreamstime for the heading photo.