Adventures in Exercising: Geocaching

For our Perfect Madness Balance month of January I have decided to focus on exercise.  I don’t want to engage in the resolutions of old, but instead I want to change my entire approach to physical fitness.  I want to discard the days of body punishing and box ticking.  I want to indulge in exercise.  I want it to be a gift I give myself.  In order for this mind shift to occur, I need to first find exercises I take pleasure in doing, so each week I will try a new form of exercise and report back my experiences, including a rating from 1-5, with 5 being the best experience possible. Read last weeks post about family yoga.

This Week: Geocaching

What is it:

“An anytime, anywhere, real world adventure.” Using the geocaching app and associated website geocaching.com, you use your GPS location to set-off in search of local hidden treasures.  The GPS in the app tracks your location in relation to the hidden caches, and provides clues to where they are, but after that assistance, you must root around and hunt for the cache yourself.  Inside is often a log book that other fellow adventurers have signed as well as little knick-nacs which can be traded.

My husband I went on a geocaching adventure in a local nature reserve we frequently walk in, The Rickmansworth Aquadrome, and the walk was given new life!  The geocaching took us off our normal route and we discovered paths we had never before explored.

Benefits:

• Exercise for the whole family
• Fun for the whole family
• Fresh air, and enjoyment of the great outdoors
• Time to connect with your family while also investing in your own fitness
• Helping promote a positive attitude toward fitness in your family
• The gentle pace, and time spent walking in between cache points allows for conversation
• Same health benefits as walking in countryside or around a track for a couple of hours
• Mild, Moderate or Strenuous exercise levels available depending on how long you want to walk, and where you want to walk
• Social connection with other community members

Drawbacks:

• Requires use of a smartphone throughout the exercise
• Hunting for the caches interrupts normal flow of conversation in comparison to other long hikes or walks
• Requires forethought and planning
• Smartphone is not as accurate as an actual GPS device, so serious geocachers would probably want to invest in one

Rating:

5/5. Incredible form of exercise for families and couples.  All the amazing health benefits of walking/hiking, but with added fun of going on a treasure hunt!  My husband and I took our 3 month old son, and we felt like kids again searching all around for the caches!  We made it slightly competitive when we got close to see who could spot it first, and who could spot the most in one afternoon.  Though planning is involved prior to setting off this is a very delightful form of exercise, that I would engage in as often as possible, before I knew it we had walked for over 2 hours!

Main image by heipei.