2014 in numbers

Over the past year I have walked approximately 4.15 million steps, covering 2 600 km, and I cycled a further 2 750 km. In between, I have taken over 6 000 photos and I’m not sure how many hours of video. It is quite interesting to look back on the year past with some data, although I don’t have much from previous years to compare it to.

I have been tracking my walking since September 2012, using a FitBit One. I’ve also been logging my cycling using a Cateye cycle computer for many years now, but started to note down distances and times for individual rides last year. The step counts on the Fitbit includes times while pedalling my bike, at approximately 3000 “steps” per hour of cycling[1]This is based a typical cadence of 60rpm, with an allowance for coasting, but ties up with when I have measured both steps and cycling time.. It possibly also includes some erroneous data from other modes of travel, where there have been jolts in a car for example, but this is probably balanced out by the few times where I forgot to take the logger with me.

There is an explanation on Quantified Self of how to get your data from the FitBit dashboard using their API, and into a Google Drive Spreadsheet, where you can save the data or do some more detailed analysis. I’m not going to bore you all my details, but it is interesting to note that most weeks I have walked between 70k and 90k steps, with a slight increase over the summer period. There were only 9 weeks when I didn’t reach 70k (my goal is for 10k steps per day), and another 9 weeks where I exceeded 90k steps. My holiday in the Western Isles stands out, as a record 127k steps over the course of a week — lots of walking and cycling.

Despite all the walking, I did hardly any hillwalking last year, only climbing 3 new hills. However walking is about more than just ticking hills off lists, and there were lots of nice walks exploring beaches, towns, and other places.

In terms of photos, I took about 3 000 photos each with my SLR and my iPhone, although I only keep a fraction of these. Often I will take multiple shots in burst mode, or with different settings to try and get the photo I want. This means however, that I need to be more ruthless with reviewing and only keep the better shots, and not everything! Of those that I’ve kept, I have uploaded just 132 to Flickr and 38 to Instagram, although there are a few more I want to upload yet… speaking of which I should probably upload a few more soon.

Over the course of the year, I think I only drove about 550km, although I’ve no idea how far I was a passenger in a car for. I have tried to work out retrospectively how far I travelled by various forms of transport, as below.

Car (driver) 550km
Car (passenger) unknown
Train[2]Doesn’t include local trains/tube in cities 4 800km
Bus[3]Doesn’t include local buses in cities 2 500km
Ferry 250km
Flying zero
Cycle 2 750km
Walk 2 600km
Canoe/Kayak/Punt 17km
Swimming 6km
Total 13 473km

It will be interesting to see how 2015 shapes up — whether I travel more, or less… only time (and logging) will tell.

Notes

Notes
1 This is based a typical cadence of 60rpm, with an allowance for coasting, but ties up with when I have measured both steps and cycling time.
2 Doesn’t include local trains/tube in cities
3 Doesn’t include local buses in cities