Mysterious Walk

Last year I started walking at lunchtime. Instead of going to eat out all the time I started bringing food from home, eating at my desk and using the time to walk. I was coming out of a bad foot injury and wanted to go back to playing soccer. But before running I needed to walk though.

So I started taking a 30 to 45 minute walk 3-4 times a week. I listened to podcasts and started using a phone app as well to track my distances, pace and calories. After 4 months I was back to my regular soccer weight and that made me happy.

I went back to soccer but never really gave up walking. I feel that my productivity improved along with my health and that I am able to deal with problems and stay cool. Sure, sometimes the weather doesn’t allow me to go for a walk and I can feel the energy building up.

Today I went for a walk at lunchtime. I work around the NC State football stadium so I use the open space to get some sun during the winter. I go on a wide loop around the parking lot as one of my many routes. I normally do a mile in 14-15 minutes. About 14 minutes in, I was notified by the app of the completion of the first mile. What felt like a minute passed and I got notified of completion of mile 302.

The first thing I thought was malfunction of the app. However, when I pulled it up on my phone 9 minutes had passed. According to the map I had gone beyond Asheville on the west side of North Carolina and back. My phone clock confirmed that the time had actually passed. The calorie count seemed consistent with a mile and a half or so.

I felt fine otherwise, but a bit confused. My wife texted me during my walk back to the office and I texted her back with the GPS claiming that I had walked over 300 miles.

What the hell happened to those 9 minutes? Why was the GPS malfunctioning on a route I have walked at least 50 times since last year?

David Almeida

January 28, 2016