My Walk FAQs

By default, clicking that My Walk tab in the main menu will display the last date you entered steps. If you haven’t entered any steps yet, it will show the starting point of your selected trail.

You can, however, navigate to any date in the past to see where you were on the trail at that time. Navigating around the different dates is easy and fast with the use of the heat map located just before the maps and photos.

The heat map shows a small calendar for the selected year (usually the current year, but you can navigate back further), with each day colored according to how many steps you recorded that day. Darker colors indicate more steps, while lighter colors indicate fewer steps. Days with no steps recorded are shown in gray. Each trail uses a different color, so you can see where you changed trails based on the hue.

The box with the yellow X outlined in red is the date currently being displayed on the My Walk page.

The year is divided into weeks, with each week shown as a column of seven squares, one for each day of the week. You can click on any square to view more information about that date as well as jump to that specific date on your walk. (If you have a mouse or some other way to hover a cursor over the squares, a box with additional information will appear about that date, but you’ll still have to click it to keep that information box open when you hover away from it.)

Above the heat map arrows allow you to navigate quickly forward or backward one day at a time, one week at a time, one month at a time or one year at a time.

If you walk with any sort of regularity, you’ll likely see some sort of pattern in the heat maps. If your job has you walking a lot Monday through Friday, for instance, you’ll likely see darker colors on those days and lighter colors on the weekends. If you walk a lot on weekends but not during the week, you’ll see the opposite pattern. If you walk a lot in the summer but not in the winter, you’ll see darker colors in the summer months and lighter colors in the winter months.

Of course, if you walk completely random distances every day of the year, the heat map will also show that and look completely random as well!

It probably did work! The My Walk tab shows where you’ve been, not where you are. Check the Profile tab to see your current location. If it’s not the trail you want to be on, use the Trails page to select the one you do want.

If you aren’t seeing photos from your newly selected trail on the My Walk page, it’s probably because you haven’t recorded any steps on the new trail yet—you’ll see the photos as soon as you actually record some steps on it!

If you’re entering several days of walking at once, it makes sense to add them in the order you walked them to easily follow your progress along a given route. However, this is not required!

Whenever you add new steps (not just editing previous step counts higher), they will always be added to the end of the section you have already walked, the furthest up the trail you have traveled thus far.

An example will probably make this clearer:

Suppose you want to add 7 miles, 9 miles, and 3 miles on three separate days. Normally you would enter them sequentially, entering 7 miles on September 1st (for instance), 9 miles on September 2nd, and 3 miles on September 3rd. At the end of September 3rd, you would be at the 19-mile mark on the trail, and your steps would be “in sequence.”

If you entered them out of order, however—say, 3 miles on September 3rd, 9 miles on September 2nd, and 7 miles on September 1st (entered in this order)—same information for each date, but entered in reverse order—your current position on the trail will be the same in both cases, but the sequence of the photos will be different. The photos for the first day of walking will show up on September 3rd, then the photos for the second day of walking will show up on September 2nd, and finally the photos for the third day of walking will show up on September 1st. You would still be at the 19-mile mark on the trail, but the photos would be “out of sequence.”

Which is fine and good—Walking 4 Fun is all about enjoying your journey, no matter the order!

If the correct order is important to you, then add steps in chronological order. If it’s not important to you, then add them in whatever order you like—you’ll still end up at the same place on the trail!

Yes! There used to be a limit of 30 days for technical reasons, but we’ve upgraded our system to allow for retroactive entries more-or-less as far back as you want. Technically, the system will reject entries before January 1, 2000—but really, how many of you really have step counts that you want to add from more than a quarter-century ago?

Deleting or editing a register entry simply involves overwriting the existing entry. You can only post one entry per walking day, so posting a new register entry will automatically overwrite your previous one. If your new register entry is empty, it will have the same effect as deleting your old register entry.

One caveat, however... You can only write in registers when you’re at it. If you write a register entry then keep walking, you won’t be able to go back to previous days to edit or delete those entries. It’s like a real register in that sense—once you’ve passed a register, you can’t go back to fix it anymore!

Whenever you record a register entry for the day, it’s location is marked as your current location on the trail. So if you’re at mile marker 23.3, your register entry is recorded as having been made at that specific location.

Whenever anyone else walking the same trail passes that specific point, they’ll see your register entry that day. It doesn’t matter how far a person has walked—just that they pass the point where you left your proverbial mark.

For instance, if someone moves about 2 miles each day and writes a register entry each day and you’re behind them but walking about 5 miles each day, you’ll likely pass 2 or 3 of their register entries each day. On the other hand, if they were walking behind you, they might have to walk 2 or 3 days just to see one of your register entries.

Like a real register, you won’t be able to go back and change your register entries once you’ve moved on, nor will you be able to read what people who come after you have written... unless, of course, you choose to hike the whole trail over again after you finish it!

Just like in real life, most people don’t take the time to write register entries most of the time. If you haven’t seen register entries from someone ahead of you on the trail, it’s because they didn’t leave any.

The thing to remember about register entries is that everyone walks at their own pace, so nobody sees exactly the same set of register entries each day. Anne (person A) might be a fast hiker and cover 10 miles in a typical day. Bob (person B) might typically cover 2 miles per day.

Imagine if Anne walks the trail first, leaving a register entry each day about 10 miles apart from each other. Bob comes along a month or two later covering 2 miles per day. On average, he’ll see a register entry from Anne once every five days—it takes him that long to cover the distance between each of Anne’s register entries. Between those entries, he’ll see absolutely nothing in the register. Anne would have passed through, but there’s no register entry by her for four consecutive days from Bob’s point of view. Bob might make a comment that “nobody” has passed through recently. Based on the lack of register entries, that’s how it looks to him.

On the other hand, if Bob came through first leaving daily register entries, then Anne follows up a bit later, Anne would typically see five register entries by Bob each day. She’s traveling the trail five times faster than Bob, after all, and passing five of Bob’s register entries each day.

Of course, nobody walks exactly the same distance every single day. Anne might cover 20 miles after a long day of hiking on a beautiful day, or cover 2 miles after falling ill. The further you walk each day, the more register entries you’ll likely see—and the fewer register entries you can leave behind.