A Year of Walking, 2025

Tuesday, December 30, 2025

View the 2025 Dashboard

Several years ago, I hurt my back. Sciatica pain is no joke. Walking became the fix. I started most mornings with an hour of loops around the park or laps on the YMCA’s indoor track. It became my routine.

This year, I decided to make it official. I set a goal: 1,000 miles. I tracked every walk using a simple setup—Apple Watch for the movement, Soulver for the math. I liked that it stayed out of the way. No social layer. No badges. Just numbers adding up, quietly.

I built a small dashboard to track it all. Nothing fancy. Just a record of the miles, the days, the streaks. A reminder that small, boring consistency adds up.

I usually went out between 6:30 and 7:00 a.m. and walked for about an hour. Toward the end of the year, I had to stretch some days longer to make up ground. December became a stretch of seven-mile mornings. Earlier in the year, four miles had been the average.

Walking does something reliable for me. It loosens my back. It clears the static. It gives my brain just enough movement to think without spiraling. The surprise this year was how motivating the 1,000 mile goal structure became. Seeing the numbers accumulate made it harder to quit on myself. I had a couple of low stretches—spring and fall especially—where I would have normally drifted off and stopped entirely. But the goal was there, quiet and patient, waiting.

So I kept going.

I’m proud of the accomplishment and excited that January 1 is only a few days away and I’ll be starting the tally all over again for 2026.

View the 2025 Dashboard