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I cycle to the station and back each day. It’s one of the best parts of the day, and it’s certainly faster than either walking or driving. It’s not a long journey, but until now I’ve never really known how far it is. I was guessing a mile or so, and I wasn’t far out.

The actual distance is a mile and a third. I know because I measured it this morning using the cyclometers Kelloggs is promoting as a part of its Cycle10 campaign to get the nation fit.

It’s a snazzy little device in shiny white plastic, its design perhaps influenced by that of the iPod, with a circular three-way button set on the front below a large LCD screen.

I don’t know whether it’s spot-on accurate, as it had a strange fascination with four speeds: 6.7mph, 9.49mhp, 10.53mph and 11.57mph. Looking at Google Maps, though, the slightly longer road route to the station, avoiding all the cycle paths, is about a mile and a half, so I do trust the mile and a third it measured on all the shortcuts today.

That’s not actually far at all, so I was surprised to see that to complete the Cycle 10 Challenge Kelloggs has built around the cyclometer (and be in with a chance of winning a prize) you don’t have to do 10 miles a day, but 10 miles a week. I’d do that passively on just three and a half working days, so I’m hoping nobody will be signing up and kidding themselves they’ve started a rigourous fitness regime.

According to a variety of online calorie calculators I’m burning off about 50 calories for each ride, which is the equivalent of a peach, a kiwi, half a pear, a single slice of rye bread or half a cup of cornflakes.

So not much.

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cycling, kelloggs, fitness, calories

This entry was posted on Friday, January 4th, 2008 at 9:30 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.