The "Walk to Rivendell" Phenomenon
I started this post as an answer to a letter I got from 
bardling today, but it got so long and complex I figured I'd just make it my post for the day. I'm still home sick, though I feel somewhat better. And with the ice storm going on outside my window I think it may be a good weekend to stay in and unpack the apartment.
bardling asked,
"And I'm becoming more and more intrigued by your Walking to Rivendell thing... having no idea what a walking challenge is or how you can reach an imaginary destination by regular exercise... *intrigued* as I said. :)"
Well, a walking challenge is when you commit to walk a certain length in a certain amount of time. For example, my Idita-Walk challenge was 1,049 minutes in 35 days. The Walk to Rivendell Challenge is 458 miles by December 17, 2003.
As for how you walk to an imaginary place in real time exercise it's done with a lot of imagination and a lot of studying of a Middle-earth atlas and "Lord of The Rings". The atlas gives very accurate measurements of how far the distances were through all the parts of the quest in LOTR and someone running the walking challenge has also figured out the distance of a lot of the events and locations from Hobbiton to Rivendell in "Fellowship of The Ring". All of us walking the challenge now keep this list of milestones close at hand and use them as "mini-goals" in our walking. For example, I've walked 20.5 miles so far, so my next milestone is 32 miles, where the hobbits first saw a Black Rider. Five miles beyond that, at 37 miles, I'll meet wood elves ('cause that's where the hobbits first ran into the elves). At 73 miles I reach Crickhollow, at 98 miles we camp down with Tom Bombadil, at 135 miles we hook up with Strider in Bree, etc.. At 458 miles I'll have reached Rivendell and the challenge will be done, hopefully just about in time to celebrate the victory with other walkers at "The Gathering" in Toronto. Now, I can do that walking wherever I wish, but I just keep up with my milestones as I go along and report them either to the Tolkien OnLine WtR thread that I started or the official WtR records at "The Eowyn Challenge" website.
This challenge is becoming huge. The woman running it posts a daily column and she is stunned by the interest and the number of sub-groups (like ours at Tolkien OnLine) that are springing up. She's now dealing with copyright issues because people want to design t-shirts and merchandise (OK, that's partly our fault, too, since it's a woman in our TORC group who set out to design and display t-shirt art to put on CafePress and she got a lot of encouragement from the rest of us). She's now seeking permission from the Tolkien estate to use the words "Rivendell" and "Eowyn" and plans are being made to give the profits to "Project Elanor", a charity project by a Tolkien group with a special fondness for Sam Gamgee called "Bit of Earth", supported by Sean Astin and "Reading Is Fundamental", presently building a children's literary garden in Oregon. There is also discussion of designing a medallion for those who finish the challenge, which would be pretty cool, too.
You can get a lot more information about "The Walk to Rivendell" on this very impressive website put up by "The Shieldmaidens", the Weight Watcher group who started the challenge: http://home.insightbb.com/~eowynchallenge/index.html
The beauty of walking in imaginary worlds, of course, is being able to do it with dozens of people here in -this- world :). In our group alone there are people walking in Canada, the United States, Poland, England, Scotland, and Australia. We're all enchanted by the idea of walking through Middle-earth, but we're also having fun talking together, encouraging each other, comparing notes and posting photos of our walking routes around the world (Dazz in Poland posted wonderful photos this week). I can't think of a more fun way to motivate myself to exercise.
Exercise log- Heh. Heh heh heh. My cold and the ice storm will keep me away from the wood elves for a few more days. Well, at least when you're sick you don't eat a lot, either.
bardling today, but it got so long and complex I figured I'd just make it my post for the day. I'm still home sick, though I feel somewhat better. And with the ice storm going on outside my window I think it may be a good weekend to stay in and unpack the apartment.bardling asked,"And I'm becoming more and more intrigued by your Walking to Rivendell thing... having no idea what a walking challenge is or how you can reach an imaginary destination by regular exercise... *intrigued* as I said. :)"
Well, a walking challenge is when you commit to walk a certain length in a certain amount of time. For example, my Idita-Walk challenge was 1,049 minutes in 35 days. The Walk to Rivendell Challenge is 458 miles by December 17, 2003.
As for how you walk to an imaginary place in real time exercise it's done with a lot of imagination and a lot of studying of a Middle-earth atlas and "Lord of The Rings". The atlas gives very accurate measurements of how far the distances were through all the parts of the quest in LOTR and someone running the walking challenge has also figured out the distance of a lot of the events and locations from Hobbiton to Rivendell in "Fellowship of The Ring". All of us walking the challenge now keep this list of milestones close at hand and use them as "mini-goals" in our walking. For example, I've walked 20.5 miles so far, so my next milestone is 32 miles, where the hobbits first saw a Black Rider. Five miles beyond that, at 37 miles, I'll meet wood elves ('cause that's where the hobbits first ran into the elves). At 73 miles I reach Crickhollow, at 98 miles we camp down with Tom Bombadil, at 135 miles we hook up with Strider in Bree, etc.. At 458 miles I'll have reached Rivendell and the challenge will be done, hopefully just about in time to celebrate the victory with other walkers at "The Gathering" in Toronto. Now, I can do that walking wherever I wish, but I just keep up with my milestones as I go along and report them either to the Tolkien OnLine WtR thread that I started or the official WtR records at "The Eowyn Challenge" website.
This challenge is becoming huge. The woman running it posts a daily column and she is stunned by the interest and the number of sub-groups (like ours at Tolkien OnLine) that are springing up. She's now dealing with copyright issues because people want to design t-shirts and merchandise (OK, that's partly our fault, too, since it's a woman in our TORC group who set out to design and display t-shirt art to put on CafePress and she got a lot of encouragement from the rest of us). She's now seeking permission from the Tolkien estate to use the words "Rivendell" and "Eowyn" and plans are being made to give the profits to "Project Elanor", a charity project by a Tolkien group with a special fondness for Sam Gamgee called "Bit of Earth", supported by Sean Astin and "Reading Is Fundamental", presently building a children's literary garden in Oregon. There is also discussion of designing a medallion for those who finish the challenge, which would be pretty cool, too.
You can get a lot more information about "The Walk to Rivendell" on this very impressive website put up by "The Shieldmaidens", the Weight Watcher group who started the challenge: http://home.insightbb.com/~eowynchallenge/index.html
The beauty of walking in imaginary worlds, of course, is being able to do it with dozens of people here in -this- world :). In our group alone there are people walking in Canada, the United States, Poland, England, Scotland, and Australia. We're all enchanted by the idea of walking through Middle-earth, but we're also having fun talking together, encouraging each other, comparing notes and posting photos of our walking routes around the world (Dazz in Poland posted wonderful photos this week). I can't think of a more fun way to motivate myself to exercise.
Exercise log- Heh. Heh heh heh. My cold and the ice storm will keep me away from the wood elves for a few more days. Well, at least when you're sick you don't eat a lot, either.