Walking Stats
I'm presently on Day 2 of a relaxing 5-day weekend. So why not post?
Earlier this year I had some obnoxious blood pressure problems. Specifically, I had high blood-pressure but then was over-medicated for it, which gave me low blood-pressure (leading to headaches, head-rushes, and generally feeling crappy for the entire month of January). Once my medication was back under control, I resolved to ditch the BP problem entirely and decided to take advantage of some generous fitness benefits offered by my employer. So starting on my birthday (March 10th), I've been meeting regularly with a dietitian, working out at the gym 5-days a week and wearing a pedometer everywhere (except during work-outs). I'll blog more about the whole shebang when I'm done the regime, but today I just want to talk about the pedometer.
The purpose of the pedometer is to make sure that daily non-exercise activity is consistently decent. Specifically, we are asked to get at least 5000 steps per day and this shouldn't deteriorate as workout intensity increases. It's counter-productive to kill yourself for 90 minutes at the gym and then collapse on the couch for the rest of the day.
Those who know me are quite aware of my affinity for walking. Perhaps it is rebellion against my rural upbringing where nothing was conveniently walkable. Meeting the 5000 step minimum has rarely been a problem. Not surprisingly, the act of measuring my daily steps has motivated me to walk a lot more (rising fuel prices have been a good motivation too).
Sometime in the past week I crossed the 1,000,000 step (since March 10th) threshold. Here is a nifty graph detailing my steps/day over time:
I think the overall upward trend can be attributed to improved weather (as we transition to summer in Seattle) and improved fitness on my part. Getting back to specifics, I walked 1,054,387 steps in the first 114 days of the program, for an average of 9249 steps/day. Using my calibrated normal stride-length (which is somewhat BS since not all strides are created equal) my step count translates to 803.4km. That sounds like a lot at first, but just over 7km/day seems pretty sane. I still find it vaguely amusing to imagine stretching out that walking in a straight southernly direction, which would put me somewhere in Northern California.
Also big kudos to people (like didds) who walk in the WTEBC, which involves walking 60km over 2 days. My highest single-day step total has been 22561, which is only about 17.2km.
Anyhow, there's no real clear thesis to this post. I would say the key takeaways are: (1) I like to walk places; (2) I am a huge dork for any statistics I can collect about my day-to-day life; (3) Measuring any activity over enough time will result in fun/impressive numbers. I am also pleased to report that I am now totally off of the blood-pressure medication, and my BP has been consistently stellar of late!
Earlier this year I had some obnoxious blood pressure problems. Specifically, I had high blood-pressure but then was over-medicated for it, which gave me low blood-pressure (leading to headaches, head-rushes, and generally feeling crappy for the entire month of January). Once my medication was back under control, I resolved to ditch the BP problem entirely and decided to take advantage of some generous fitness benefits offered by my employer. So starting on my birthday (March 10th), I've been meeting regularly with a dietitian, working out at the gym 5-days a week and wearing a pedometer everywhere (except during work-outs). I'll blog more about the whole shebang when I'm done the regime, but today I just want to talk about the pedometer.
The purpose of the pedometer is to make sure that daily non-exercise activity is consistently decent. Specifically, we are asked to get at least 5000 steps per day and this shouldn't deteriorate as workout intensity increases. It's counter-productive to kill yourself for 90 minutes at the gym and then collapse on the couch for the rest of the day.
Those who know me are quite aware of my affinity for walking. Perhaps it is rebellion against my rural upbringing where nothing was conveniently walkable. Meeting the 5000 step minimum has rarely been a problem. Not surprisingly, the act of measuring my daily steps has motivated me to walk a lot more (rising fuel prices have been a good motivation too).
Sometime in the past week I crossed the 1,000,000 step (since March 10th) threshold. Here is a nifty graph detailing my steps/day over time:
I think the overall upward trend can be attributed to improved weather (as we transition to summer in Seattle) and improved fitness on my part. Getting back to specifics, I walked 1,054,387 steps in the first 114 days of the program, for an average of 9249 steps/day. Using my calibrated normal stride-length (which is somewhat BS since not all strides are created equal) my step count translates to 803.4km. That sounds like a lot at first, but just over 7km/day seems pretty sane. I still find it vaguely amusing to imagine stretching out that walking in a straight southernly direction, which would put me somewhere in Northern California.
Also big kudos to people (like didds) who walk in the WTEBC, which involves walking 60km over 2 days. My highest single-day step total has been 22561, which is only about 17.2km.
Anyhow, there's no real clear thesis to this post. I would say the key takeaways are: (1) I like to walk places; (2) I am a huge dork for any statistics I can collect about my day-to-day life; (3) Measuring any activity over enough time will result in fun/impressive numbers. I am also pleased to report that I am now totally off of the blood-pressure medication, and my BP has been consistently stellar of late!