2016 in numbers

With the new year upon use, time for my annual analysis of the year just past. I’ve continued logging my physical activity and travel, with a few more categories. In 2016 I took approximately 4.5 million steps, covering over 3 000 km, and I cycled a further 1 300 km. Continuing the trend from my previous comparison, this is slightly more walking but less cycling than the previous year, possibly as I have started running this year.

As with the past couple of years, I imported step count data from my FitBit into a Google spreadsheet, using the script by Simon Bromberg I’d set up before. It worked without any issues this time, so just a case of updating a few columns and references to get the totals and some graphs. Because my Fitbit records pedalling as ‘steps’, I have subtracted 3 000 steps per hour of cycling when calculating my total walking distance, consistent with last year.

Last year I walked about 3% more than I did in 2015, and 10% more than 2014, however my maximum number of steps in a day was “only” 29 700, cf. 40 k the previous year. My goal throughout the year was to try and exceed 70k steps ever week, and there was only four times where I didn’t meet this. My lowest weekly total was just over 64 k. Most weeks I took between 70 k and 100 k steps, with a median of 84 k steps per week.

In terms of photography, in 2016 I took about 5 400 photos with my SLR (a lot of which were combined into HDR and panoramas), plus another 1 200 odd photos with my iPhone. Of these, I uploaded just 132 to Flickr and 39 to Instagram, although as always I am working through a backlog for Flickr. A significant chunk of these were taken on my trip to Ireland, 2 100 in total, although I did manage to loose a memory card with about 400 photos, covering the stretch from the Giant’s Causeway round to Malin Head. At least this means fewer to process!

I’ve also kept updating my log of how far I travelled by various forms of transport. I just updating every few months when I remembered, taking distance from map directions or just an estimate. As was the case in previous years, I’ve not counted local travel in cities (by car, subway, tram, or bus), as this would take too much effort, and I don’t think it amounts to that much anyway as I mostly walk or cycle.

This all means I can compile a revised version of my big table of distances.

Mode of travel 2014 2015 2016
Car (driver) 550 km  690 km  1 000 km
Car (passenger) unknown  460 km  1 660 km
Train 4 800 km  11 400 km  8 560 km
Bus/coach 2 500 km  800 km  630 km
Ferry/motorboat 250 km  550 km  620 km
Sailing ~  ~10 km  100 km
Flying zero zero  zero
Cycle 2 750 km  2 030 km  1 330 km
Walk 2 600 km  2 900 km  3 060 km
Run ~ ~  270 km
Boat[1]canoe/kayak/punt 17 km  zero  3 km
Swimming 6 km  20 km  46 km
Total self propelled 5 373 km  4 950 km 4 709 km
Grand Total 13 473 km  18 850 km  17 250 km

I’m still not sure I can (or should) draw (m)any conclusions from this, but I find it interesting, and that’s what matters to me.

Notes

Notes
1 canoe/kayak/punt