Walker Tracker Blog

It’s a busy day at Walker Tracker -

We were chosen as a Kim Komando cool site of the day. Thanks, Kim!

We were blogged on Crooked Timber, by Eszter Hargittai. Thanks Eszter!

And we signed our first Private Level in New Zealand. 

So yes - the site is hopping today, and we’re monitoring it to make sure it stays up and stays fast.

Thanks all,

Ben

Martin Vosseler vows not to enter a car until he reaches Boston, 3,000 miles from his starting point, in the name of solar energy.

Great stuff. We better get Martin a pedometer pronto.

Read about Martin at WorldChanging or visit his website: SunWalk2008.com

There are a bunch of new features to announce:

• Quick Post  (for Pro users)

See this on your Add Steps page. Clicking the link will bring up a window that will allow you to add 7-20 days of steps/blog entries in about a tenth of the time it took before. No need to hit submit, changes are saved automagically.

  Thanks go to @Tony for the idea!

• New Competition Type: Goal Challenge

More of a challenge than a competition: This allows you to create a community goal. ie: Everyone walk 25,000 steps over 5 days. Everyone who does wins.

  Thanks go to @Ms*Bindy for the idea!

• Competition Limitations

Want to create an Open Competition that only Walkers with step averages between 6,000 and 8,000 can join? It’s now possible with competition limitations. When you create a competition, select Public & Open Competition  to see this option.

  Thanks go to @Heikeakg for the idea!

• More

Competition initiators can now delete their own competitions Participants can now leave a competition if they no longer wish to take part On your profile page, the highest/lowest scores are now linked to those actual entries. Nifty. Bug fixes

More to come soon!

Have a great weekend, Walker Tracker

It’s resolution time and exercise and weight loss are the most universal and popular resolutions.

A few of my resolutions are to exercise more, read and write more, and get out of the city (camp, hike, etc) more often.

However a few of these resolutions sound suspiciously similar to the ones I made last year. — so how do you get a resolution to stick?

The New York Times attempts to answer that question here:

Will Your Resolutions Last to February?

The general idea is to make small, very specific resolutions. Don’t resolve to ‘get in shape’, resolve to keep a specific step average every month, to walk your dog twice per week, etc.

Best of luck to all of you, see you in 2008!

-Ben

The New York Times has a post on a new study in Italy that determined that regular walkers had a 27% lower chance of developing dementia.

What’s important about the study is that it again shows exercise doesn’t have to be excruciating to reap the benefits. “It’s important to note that an easy-to-perform moderate activity like walking provided the same cognitive benefits as other, more demanding activities,” said study author Dr. Giovanni Ravaglia of University Hospital S. Orsola Malpighi, in Bologna, Italy.

Go brain go!

Link: Walking May Lower Dementia Risk

From Reuters:

People who use a pedometer to measure how far they walk lose more weight, exercise more and have lower blood pressure than those who do not, researchers said on Tuesday.

But then, we already knew that.

View the article: It pays to count - pedometer study finds

We crossed a billion steps collectively in the last few days - Congratulations to all!

That is really a lot of steps you’ve all walked. When I hear the word Billion I still think of Carl Sagan’s Billyuns and Billyuns of stars, and so the obvious correlation here is that you’re all rock stars.

Nice job and keep walking.

Hooray! The Willamette Week has chosen Walker Tracker for its annual Best of Portland issue.

Have a look at what they say (you’ll need to scroll to the bottom).