Tracking physical activity

I am a natural “data” person. I enjoy facts and figures, comparisons and visuals of how I am performing. In past years, I’ve gotten a little too wrapped up in data keeping and have spent so much time documenting my progress that I end up with less time spent exercising (not a significant amount of time, but some nonetheless). Most of my data in past years has been tracked on my own spreadsheets, but for the true triathlete geek, I found “BeginnerTriathlete” to have the best free tracking site. However, if you’re not interested in getting that technical, I also found a couple of sites which encourage simpler tracking (one based on mileage, the other based on time). The "President's Challenge" awards points for virtually any activity you can imagine (mowing your lawn, gardening, baton twirling (!), trampoline, etc, etc) and tracking is done by minutes, so logging is extremely easy. The other site I've become fascinated with is from a researcher at Berkeley who has developed a transcontinental virtual trip across the United States. Each time you enter your mileage, it is added to your total and shows you exactly what you would see if you had been traveling from Yorktown, Virginia to Florence, Oregon. For example, if you ran two miles one day, walked four miles the next, and cycled six miles on the third day, you would see the views at 2, 6, and 12 miles west of Yorktown on days one, two and three. They also provide maps that show your progress. The disadvantage to this site is that they only provide for walking, running and biking mileage. Since I do many other things, it's nice to use the other sites to track progress. However, it is neat to explore the site and see your progress on the maps. I have been tracking my daily mileage since June 4th and I'm already at 176.5 miles, which puts me near Woodridge, VA , just south east of Charlottesville. Pretty cool. Both sites allow you to enter activities retroactively, so you don't have to log on the computer daily. Happy walking!