Yesterday I wrote about looking back and reflecting on my walking activities in 2017. So now it is time to look forward to 2018, and to set goals and targets for this year. If 2017 was good, the thing now is to make 2018 even better.
I am not one for making New Year resolutions. So many people make resolutions like do more exercise, go to the gym regularly, lose weight, and so on. These are all too vague for me. I have the one sporting leisure activity, and it is my walking. I could simply say “walk more”, but that is too unspecific for me. So as I look forward to 2018, I want to have very specific measurable targets for the year.
So first, let’s take the general target: number of steps for the year. In 2017, I clocked up 6.24 million steps, even though some additional step data was lost. So I am left to work out what would be a reasonable target for 2018. By reasonable, I mean that it has to be challenging, but not impossible. So I will aim for 6.3 million. That works out at 17260 per day. It is not a great round number, but it will do. So on December 31st, I should have averaged that daily figure and reached 6.3 million.
I also want to continue walking the pilgrim route towards Santiago. In 2017 I finished the section from the Swiss border to Le Pu yen Velay (340 km) so I will set a target for 2018 to walk from Le Puy to Roncesvalles, which is just inside the Spanish border. It is a distance of about 700 kilometers. I am still wrestling with whether I should walk that in one trip or in two. Well, I guess I need to start planning and looking into what is feasible in that regard.
So those are the two that will decide success or failure for the year. I will allow myself a little bit of leeway on the second objective. If I get to St. Jean-Pied-de-Port, I will consider it done. That is the last stop in France, and it is for most people the official start of the Spanish Camino. I would like to get to Roncesvalles as the first stop in Spain, so that then I could say the French section was totally and absolutely completed, but I will settle for St. Jean if it works out that way.
I will also set myself a kind of bonus target. Those first two would constitute success, and that would be fine, but I feel like throwing in an additional target as well. Let’s call it the difference between success and overwhelming success. And that target will be to walk the complete circuit of Basel canton. It is not a defined trail, but I believe that it will be possible to find existing trails that will take me close to the borders of the canton. Right now, I have no idea of the length of the cantonal borders, but this is one way to find out. I have chosen this one precisely because it is not a defined trail at this time. But also, it should be possible to do it in day stages relatively easily since all the starting and ending points should be a short train or bus ride from Basel city.
So now that my goals for the year are set, all I have to do is go out there and achieve them. And of course, I will write about it here.
PS: my acknowledgements and thanks once again to Dreamstime for the heading imagery.
Walkingman 