As a way to get physically away from staring at school books and the Internet all day, I started doing long walks with my dog Kismo 43 days ago today. We’ve continued to do this daily for the last 1,5 months and today we passed the 200km line.

With the exception of one day where Kismo was doped from having been to the vet and a few days where it was raining too much, we’ve been out every day. In the beginning we tried out various routes accessible from were we live, but in the end we settled on a 6.5 km route which is the one we’re currently sticking to if there’s nothing special going on (like extremely good weather). Counting in the days where we did much shorter routes, the average distance per day is 4.65 km, which any dog should be happy with. The longest walk was about 10.5 km.

Being a gadget geek, the Nike+ sensor was the perfect way to make the whole thing a bit more interesting. A $20 sensor isn’t exactly the biggest investment in the world and the system is awesome. Judging from the distances it has recorded doing the most used route of 6.5 km, there is hardly any margin of error at all. It consistently shows between 6.35 and 6.65 every time, a variance which is more than likely due to the fact you never walk exactly the same route every time. It has hung on me once (needing a reboot, probably due to low RAM or something and the sensor has lost contact without the iPod trying to reconnect a couple of times when we’ve had breaks (normally it pauses when you stand still for a minute or so) but otherwise it’s been very stable and reliable. It runs in the background which lets you do stuff like mail or blogging while it’s running without problem.

Being the accessory-geek-slash-gadget-addict that I am, I of course had to upgrade my “dog walking rig” as well. I got a 3 litre camelback water backpack from eBay for $20 shipped along with a portable dog bowl for $6.5 shipped which put together gives both me and the dog water for the walks. Add some ice from the freezer and it even stays cold. I also needed sunglasses and got a pair of nice ones from eBay for $15.

After the first few walks, it became apparent that there was a lot of nice snapshot opportunities on these trips, but my giant 5.6cm thick Canon A650IS wasn’t exactly the most pocket friendly camera on Earth. I bought a cheap Casio EX-S880 and sold the A650 – a trade that left me with $100 extra since the A650 is much more expensive even used and it had a lot of accessories. I’m a lot more happy with the EX-S880 than I ever was with the A650. First of all it’s about a second faster (half a second each for autofocus and trigger lag) which is a big deal when taking photos of a dog that doesn’t sit still for long. I also find the picture quality to be better, with a lot less noise. The video feature is the biggest difference, whereas the A650 did 640×480 and saved it as huge .mov files with god knows what internal format the S880 does up to 848×480 (16:9 widescreen version of the A650’s resolution) and saves them in the space-saving h.264 format. The S880 also has a dedicated recording button whereas the A650 had a function wheel which you needed to turn to activate video. The most important difference is however the physical size as I now carry the S880 with me at all times. The best camera is always the one you have with you.

Finally I got a data plan for my Nokia E51 giving me 100MB of data for $7 a month. More than enough for email and such things. With JoikuSpot premium running on the E51 and turning it into a WiFi/3G router I can also use the iPod touch if I want to.

Lastly, the view from some of the routes we walk is pretty decent, so I bought a 7x magnifying monocular from DealExtreme which now hangs on the back of the backpack in case there’s something interesting.

All in all I love the Nike+ sensor and while my dog walk gear might be a bit much for some, it does make it great fun. 200 km in 43 days is good enough for me and while it might not be the best work out ever the point of the whole thing is to get some fresh air and get away from the books.