Author name: Mark Haworth

Some time ago I decided to pay my subscription to RunKeeper. It’s the app I use on my phone to keep track of all my running activities while I’m out pounding the streets or on the treadmill. While all the apps that are available have their pros and cons, it’s RunKeeper that works the best for me.

Now that I’ve paid, it now allows me to look back and produce reports and analysis of all my previous activities. It’s proving very interesting. I started my “campaign” back in July 2011, with the intention of running at least a couple of miles a day as often as I could. As I’ve got fitter (and lighter), I found I could obviously do more, so what’s happened is that every now and again I’ll do (for me), a long run at a fairly slow pace, then more frequent shorter (but faster) ones.

My current “usual” distance is four miles. At the weekend and whenever else I feel like it, it goes up to five miles, then every now and again, anywhere between seven and thirteen miles. Snag is, with working away a fair bit, I have to rely on treadmills in hotel gyms, and while I don’t mind that, it’s often not possible to exercise every day. Sometimes in certain places where there’s no gym, I’ll maybe go a week with no more than the walking up the hotel stairs.

Anyway, to the point. I wanted to know what I’ve averaged since I started running, and these statistics are for running only, they don’t include any walking, cycling, swimming etc. It turns out I average over 90 miles per month, or just over three miles every day. It’s less than I thought, so will now look to increase it somewhat! More interestingly, I’ve nearly racked up  2,000 miles, and as was the intention, I’m keeping the weight off 🙂

I’m often asked what’s the “secret” of losing weight. Well there isn’t one. Simpy eat less and exercise more! Once you’ve got your head around that, it’s easily achievable!