Put your nerd hats on, folks, because this post is filled with evidence of my nerdiness. (I never take my nerd hat off, by the way.)
Last week, when I was having a hard time, I promised myself that I would go running. It felt great – I ran 2.6 miles and climbed 68 floors of stairs at a local parking garage. (The garage isn’t 68 stories tall, it’s four. I ran it 14 times.) The run felt great, and afterward, I posted this photo on social media:
In addition to providing a much needed boost to my emotional state, that run turned out to be a milestone run. Those 2.6 miles pushed me across a major threshold: I had completed 1,500 cardio miles!
Two summers ago, I started tracking all the miles I completed doing any form of cardio: running, biking, elliptical, etc. I needed a goal to get myself moving after six weeks of inactivity thanks to a surgery. My goal was to virtually get myself to Las Vegas, 274 miles away, and the project was a huge success. My Cardio to Vegas posts are some of my favorites, and I reached my goal in a little over three months.
By that point, tracking my miles had become habitual, so I kept doing it. I include a cardio miles update as part of my monthly progress reports. Every so often, I would plot my new total on a map, and that’s how I’ve virtually made it to Hurricane, Utah, Grand Junction, Colorado, and past my sister’s house near Boulder.
Now that I’ve done over 1,500 miles of cardio, it’s time to have some more fun with maps! My new total is actually 1,504.5 miles, because I’ve also done 1 mile on an elliptical, and 1.8 miles on an Arc Trainer.
So, how far is 1504.5 miles? If I start at my home in North Hollywood, California, it means I’ve exercised all the way to…
LINCOLN, NEBRASKA!
Here’s a close-up of my stopping point, on I-80, near the airport and the University of Nebraska campus.
Lincoln is actually a great place to stop if you’re a fitness nut like me. That’s because the University of Nebraska claims to have the largest weight room in the country. It covers 3/4 of an acre! And if you want to take a little break from exercise, there’s other things to do, too. Lincoln is home to both the International Quilt Study Center and Museum and the National Museum of Roller Skating, so… bring your camera!
Just for fun, I played around and saw what 1,500 miles looks like in other parts of the world, as well. 1,500 miles will take you most of the way up the east coast! If you start in Miami, Florida and go for 1,504 miles, you’ll end up almost in New Hampshire.
The stopping point is in Lawrence, Massachusetts, which is the birthplace of one of my favorite composers, Leonard Bernstein, as well as two famous Roberts, Goulet and Frost. (Well… poet Robert Frost wasn’t born there, but he did move there around age 11 and stayed until after high school.)
Jump across the ocean, and you’ll see that 1,504 miles would provide a very scenic tour through 5 European countries. There, distance is measured in kilometers, and if you start in Madrid, Spain and head north for 2,420 kilometers, you’ll travel through France, Belgium, and Germany before reaching a stopping point in rural Denmark.
The stopping point in Denmark is still about 100 kilometers from Copenhagen, but it’s pretty close to a small town called Holme Olstrup, which is home to an amusement park called BonBon-Land, which has a ride called Hundeprutterutchebane. Who speaks Danish? That name loosely translates as “Dog Fart Coaster,” and as soon as I read that, I had to learn more. Sure enough, the ride is built around a statue of a farting dog – complete with piles of turds around him – and fart noises are played through speakers. Experience it for yourself in this YouTube video:
Since I love roller coasters, this seems like a fitting place to stop. Six Flags, get with it! Dog fart coasters are surely the wave of the future!
And while I have no plans to go to Denmark at the moment, I will continue to track my miles, because I love seeing where my exercise takes me. With 1,500 miles under my belt, I’m over halfway to making it from coast to coast!
Keep it up, David!
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Keep It Up, David! 
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