This is the first time I have pre-booked the trains at either end plus the ten b&b’s in between. Another first is I’m  using my new Polar H7 heart monitor with the iCardio app on the iPhone.

When we left George’s house in Kendal it was hammering down with rain. However, by noon when we arrived at Portpatrick all was clear but with a very cold wind blowing hard.

The walk is, so far, well marked although with a fair bit of road/track walking today. The moorland bits were very boggy with no refinements such as gravel or paving slabs like on other National Trails. The Via Ferrata bit is a chain handrail alongside straightforward  steps in the rock.

We did 18.38 miles in 5hr 52min + 1hr 35min stops  according to my GPS as we went into Stranraer to grab some fish & chips before our b&b. This is the rather magnificent deluxe Chlenry Farmhouse (which offers a big meal with wine for £35 each…)

Tomorrow is Bargrennan some 25 miles away

All the day’s pictures are here

The trip statistics are here 

The trip on Everytrail is here 

The apps and things I currently measure are:

Daily Body Weight

Using Fatwatch (iPhone rough equivalent of Eatwatch) and Withings scales. I now have 1950 readings from the past 8 years from the chart you can see a highly skewed distribution of weights.  One side affect of this is that I now know I have spent 1109 nights away from home in the past 8 and a bit years Since I only weigh myself at home!

Sleep

I tried Zeo & SleepCycle but didn’t get on with them. I now use the Fitbit and Snorelab. Fitbit has an API which enables me to draw nice charts from all the data it collects. The shows shows a normal distribution centred around  440 and 460 mins (about 7 1/2 hours) of sleep in the past 416 days.

Snorelab has no API so hard to do nice graphs over many weeks, although I might enter all the data into a spreadsheet by hand. Obviously you can do screen shots like the example shown. All it has proved is that I snore a lot! mainly when I first go to sleep.

 Exercise

I am a keen walker as you can tell by reading this, and looking at my step counts on the chart.

I did a post on the different ways I measure steps etc here.

Etc

Other things I have measured are:

• DNA through 23&me,
• Moves,
• Daily Mugshot,
• Blood pressure using Withings,
• Quicken for home finance.

and probably a few more after the weekend!

We took the train from Cambridge to Bishops Stortford (equally fast frequent trains from Stansted airport & London). First part of the walk is along The Stort navigation past locks & narrow boats plus two nature reserves, although Chris didn’t have much time for bird watching, apparently walking and twitching don’t mix). After leaving the river and crossing the main line (trains every 3mins so don’t hang about on the level crossing)  we made our way over to Thorley with its delightful church we had a bit of confusion at Thorley Wash after crossing the A1184, but we took the track, rather than through down the private drive, which then transforms into a delightful old coach road.

We arrived at Perry Green and made straight to The Hoops for a pint & salad, a tad pricey but excellent quality.  Straight after lunch it was across the road to see the Moore / Rodin exhibition of  sculptures, totally stunning! & a must see. I thought artists were meant to be poor! However, according to Wikipedia he was paying a million pounds a year in income tax! Maybe we overpay for public works of art The staff said it was OK to take photos outside so you can see some of them on Flickr.

A lovely walk back via SideHill full of bluebells (Chris pondered wether they were Spanish or Native) past enormous houses and then a lovely walk into Bishops Stortford through the sports grounds of the college ( a snap at £24,000 per year for boarders).

Chris treated me to tea and a chocolate brownie at the Host restaurant in Stortford. Then it was back home. an excellent walk on a perfect day. The walk is on Everytrail :
Bishops Stortford circular walk to Henry Moore  Centre at EveryTrail

Sally & Gina I presume?

Since she was walking with her Twitter friend Gina I decided to stay at home. However, I couldn’t let her zoom 50,000 steps ahead of me in the Fitbit leader board soi decided to walk from Cambridge to meet her. With the combination of Latitude and the aforesaid GPX file I was able to ‘bump’ into them when they were 2/3rds of the way around. As you can see conditions were less than summery.

The conditions were pretty gruesome all round , the most hated part for me was the ice sticking to the heal of my boots meaning I had to keep stopping to hack it off plus the paths were a quagmire in many places.

Daffodils I presume?

Overall I did 51,000 steps (However Sally still did 7,000 more steps than me). No daffodils, in flower,  could be found, just a few shoots.

Overall an excellent day out. Especially the warming soup & cake at the end thanks to our new found friend Jayne and the LDWA.

All my photos of the day can be found on that rubbish service called Google+ try looking here, Good Luck!

The gadgets I was carrying where an iPhone5 with the Moves app running & the route in the Viewranger app (although not tracking). I also had the route stored in my Garmin etrex 20 which was also storing our track as we walked it. Finally I was wearing my trusty Fitbit Ultra.

I’m pleased to say they all worked flawlessly and all their batteries stayed live for the 11 or so hours we were out. I was also carrying my Canon 550D with a 18-135mm lens.

Moves

This is a very nifty app that automatically works out if you are walking, cycling or just sat in a vehicle! It works by using the internal GPS (battery only lasts a few hours) and also the various internal motion sensors. At the end of the day it produces a summary and storyline (see left image). For this walk (and to and froing  before & after) it gave a result of 58,499 steps, 25.7 miles in 10hours 29mins. You can also see the times we summited and the little stops we had.

I now use this app everyday the biggest disadvantage (apart from battery life – which to me is OKish)is that you cannot easily create a database of activity.

I kept the iPhone in an Aquapac case to stop water damage & also took a TeckNeti EP387 7000mAh external battery pack with cable. (Total weight 368gm)

Fitbit

As anyone knows both Sally and I are obsessed with this amazing device.

This gave a reading of 60,600 steps, 28.6 miles. 523 floors climbed (5230 feet in normal speak) and 5340 calories burned over about 12.5 hours .  So it agrees very closely to Moves.

GPS

Using Ascent OSX app we get the profile and speed as:

This worked out we had walked 24.8 miles in a moving time of 8hr 45min (average speed 2.8mph) with an ascent of 5,579 feet. So the other devices had a pretty good correlation. So the Fitbit really does work

All my photos of the days walk can be found here.

How to master your time

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This video from Trevor Eissler, Author of "Montessori Madness" explains the differences in a really cool and creative way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcgN0lEh5IA

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I'll answer your question, but first I need to explain all of human civilisation in 2 minutes with the aid of a cartoon snake.

Humans like to think we're a clever lot. Yet those magnificent, mighty brains that allow us to split the atom and touch the moon are the same stupid brains that can't start an assignment until the day before it's due.

We evolved from primitive creatures, but we never quite shed ourselves of their legacy. You know the clever, rational part of your brain you think of as your human consciousness? Let's call him Albert. He lives in your brain alongside an impulsive baby reptile called Rex:

(Rex is your basal ganglia, but that's not very catchy so I'm sticking with Rex).

Rex evolved millions of years ago – unsurprisingly enough, in the brains of reptiles – and his instincts guide and motivate you to this day. Hunger. Fear. Love. Lust. Rex's thoughts are primitive and without language.

Here's the bit you're not going to like. Rex makes the final call on all your decisions. Every. Single. One.

We like to think of Albert as "our true self" – the conscious part of your brain. He's the talking, reasoning part. When we decide to go to the gym or write that term paper, Albert made that decision.

Rex does listen to Albert. Like a child, he will do a lot of what he's told, as long as he wants to. But if Rex prefers to crash on the sofa to watch Survivor and eat Cheetos, that's what you're going to do.

The incredible ascension of mankind that surrounds us is largely possible because we've developed systems to nurture our reptilian brains, to subdue, soothe and subvert them.

Much of this this system we call "civilisation". Widely available food and shelter take care of a lot. So does a system of law, and justice. Mandatory education. Entertainment. Monogamy. All of it calms Rex down for long enough for Albert to do something useful – like discover penicillin, or invent Cheetos.

Now let's look at your procrastination.

You're making a decision with your conscious mind and wondering why you're not carrying it out. The truth is the real decision maker – Rex – is not nearly so mature.

Imagine you had to constantly convince a young child to do what you wanted.  For simple actions, asserting your authority might be enough. "It's time for dinner". But if that child doesn't want to do something, it won't listen. You need to cajole it:

• Forget logic. Once you've decided to do something, logic and rationale won't help you. Your inner reptile can be placated, scared and excited. But it doesn't speak with language and cannot be reasoned with.
• Comfort matters. If you're hungry, tired or depressed your baby reptile will rebel. Fail to take care of yourself, and he'll wail and scream and refuse to do a damn thing you say. That's what he's for. Eat, sleep and make time for fun.
• Nurture discipline. Build a routine of positive and negative reinforcement. If you want a child to eat their vegetables, don't give them dessert first. Reward yourself for successes, and set up assured punishments for your failure. Classic examples include committing to a public goal, or working in a team – social pressure can influence Rex. 
• Incite emotion. Your reptile brain responds to emotion. That is its language. So get yourself pumped, or terrified. Motivational talks, movies and articles can work, for a while. I use dramatic music (one of my favourite playlists is called "Music to Conquer Worlds By"). Picture the bliss associated with getting something done, or the horrors of failing. Make your imagination vivid enough that it shakes you. We use similar tricks on children for a reason: "brush your teeth or they'll fall out".
• Force a start. The most important thing you can do is start. Much of Rex's instincts are to avoid change, and once you begin something those instincts start to tip into your favour. With enough time, you can even convince Rex to love doing the things he hated. There's a reason we force kids to go to school or to try piano lessons.
• Bias your environment. Rex is short sighted and not terribly bright. If he sees a Facebook icon, he'll want it. It's like showing a child the start of a cool TV program immediately before bedtime. Design your environment to be free from such distractions: sign out of instant messenger, turn off notifications, turn off email. Have separate places for work and fun, and ideally separate computers (or at least accounts).

Once you know what to look for, you'll start to recognise the patterns and control them.

There's an impulsive baby reptile in your brain, and unfortunately he has the steering wheel. If you can be a good parent to him he'll mostly do what you say, and serve you well. Just remember who's in charge.

For more posts like this, follow my board: Leading a better life

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Fitbit on Amazon

I at to smile at this twitter from Fitbit:

Have you ever wondered how far you walk if you add up a year of steps? Keep an eye out for an email from us to learn about your 2012 stats!

— Fitbit (@fitbit) January 3, 2013

Since I’ve already accomplished this and more by using the excellent Fitbit API and the  script written by John McLaughlin aka @loghound for Google docs. Ernesto Ramirez also made an  how to video on Vimeo which easily explained the process, so that even I could do it!

The results can be found in this google spreadsheet (It may take a while to download, it’s rather big.

In my case the answer is 8,867,720 steps or 7,161Km (4,449 miles) which took 1,226.982 Kcals of energy (more or less I did lose just over 1kg in weight through the year). My weight chart is here

Time wise I spent:-

• 32% in bed, asleep for 30% + 2100 awakenings
• 36% sedentary
• 14% lightly active
• 7% very active
• Using google charts I produced this rather nifty chart of my daily steps.

So an interesting year for me.

9 Jan 2013 update. Here is the email: