NONgoals - a bit of an explanation

Lifted from this morning's Facebook status update - sort of explains the whole "NONgoal" thing I was cackling about back in January.

99 miles in February, one to go!

Although last night's 11 and 3/4 mile walk was a good example of why I'm talking about "nongoals" with the walking. Having done 100 in January, naturally I had that in my head as a target for February, even though I'd promised myself that I wouldn't do that to myself - February is a shorter month, and we are beginning to get into the spring crunch at work and the last thing I need to do is inflict extra pressure on myself.

Last night was a lovely night, though, and I'd been thinking that it might be a good night to wrap up another 100 mile month.

I did another new walk, and a nice one (over to the Hudson from work, down around the Battery and then up along the East River to 57th street, then to 57th street and 7th ave to meet the Q train) but I started a little later than I should, I was tired enough that I got very aggravated by running into unannounced barriers on the East River Promenade and having to backtrack (I may actually be at 100 miles but the turnbacks aren't easy to spot on Google Maps) and then the Q train was doing the horribly annoying 2-section thing (see note at end) by the time I was riding home. This is why I don't want to start setting goals of 100 miles a month - the whole point is that I'm trying to up my activity level by doing things I enjoy, not ruin things I enjoy by obsessing over upping my activity.

Note- Horribly annoying 2-section Q-train thing goes like this: Up until around midnight or so, I could have gotten on a Q train at 57th street and that train would have taken me straight home, fairly quickly. After midnight, the Q gets broken into 2 sections, one from 57th street to Atlantic Avenue (2nd stop in Brooklyn as you're coming from Manhattan and a very large station where a lot of subway lines converge and you can also switch to the Long Island Railroad) and another from a different platform at Atlantic Avenue on out to Coney Island. Pretty much automatically makes the time it takes to get home at least half again as long. They do it for track work, it's not like the MTA is actually trying to make late-night commuters unhappy, but it still makes late-night commuters unhappy.