Was led to a cool nerd fitness site

As the premiere of the new Hobbit movie is fast approaching (I cannot wait to go see it!), interest in all things Tolkien I'm sure will start to pick up (again). I love, love, love the books and I love, even more, the movies. Is that a terrible thing to say? No... I'm a visual person, so I like seeing things and Peter Jackson's vision of the world of Hobbits is much like I imagined them myself, even better.

I got my first introduction to the Hobbit as a kid when there was the  animated movie. I think I saw it (and the follow up movie) a few times after that. One of my favorite songs and one I used to sing a lot to myself was this one: Where there's a whip, there's a way! (Rankin/Bass were awesome!) 

When I was a teen when we had to read the book in 7th grade. I had just moved to Cedar Falls from Waterloo, Iowa and the English class was in the middle of reading Tolkien's, The Hobbit. It was not difficult to catch up! At the end of the reading of this book, we watched the movie and I had a new appreciation for the movie because of the book. Sure, it skips a lot, but I knew more and watching the movie helped me relive the book as it came to life.

I tried reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy several times, but I never could get into it. For one reason or another, I would get interrupted for a week or so and when I would try to jump back into the first book of the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, I would find myself lost. There were so many characters and names and places that I couldn't keep them straight in my head. So, I would have to start the book again, and again. I finally read all three books shortly before the Jackson movie trilogy was released. 

The books are very visual. The story is rich. I mean, really, Tolkien created a whole world, the Middle Earth with complete languages! I wanted to go there. I wanted to live in the Shire! Seeing the movies made the books come alive. And the Shire, the simple beauty of nature... aw... I was in heaven and then then magic of Rivendell, and then the ugliness of Mordor, where you could feel the oppression  Then there was all the amazing, breathtaking stops in between. Jackson did a brilliant job with the cinemotography for these movies and the images are in my head forever.

So, this piqued my interest as a Middle Earth fan and as a walker - walking your way through the books! How cool is that! This was linked in a weigh loss forum, but it's for anyone. You can walk and then when you come back in and log your miles you can see where you have walked to. Check it out at: Eowyn challenge walk. Look around the site. You can just read where you have been, visual where you have been, what's happening in the books during the time you would have walked there if you were with Frodo (or with Bilbo if you follow the Hobbit book path). It's a lot of walking. It would take most of us well over a year to complete it. But what fun! 

There's a forum, challenges, places to journal your walks, etc. I'm psyched! It's just another tool to make this fitness thing more fun and exercise should be fun!