For most of us, walking fills a significant portion of our time. From ambling out of bed in the morning, to taking us where we need to be, through a leisurely stroll through the park, walking provides essential mobility. It’s also one of the easiest, cheapest, and best exercises we can do.
I’ve been working to keep my better personal habits up (eating the right kinds and amounts of foods, mostly), but I’ve pretty much maxed out on my long-term body reshaping project. A long, cold, filled with snow winter did nothing to help the situation, either. But, with Spring came new opportunity to get outside. I had generally planned to do more, but didn’t have any real concrete idea of what to do.
In mid March or so, I bought a new game which came with a pedometer. There’s some gimmicky bits that make it work with the game, but I was looking forward to it mainly as a way to track my progress with the “get out and do more” plan. I also moved to a spot very close to work, which made walking many days a reasonable option. Combine this with friends doing “30 Days of Biking” and a desire to join them in spirit, and I had a plan: do more walking in April.
I had the walk to work to help me, providing about 2000 steps a day, if I walked to and from twice. Combine that with regular daily activity set a baseline day at around 5000 to 6000 steps. Between a nearby park with a walking track, as well as area hiking trails and some of my other hobbies, getting a good working average above that wasn’t too hard.
The month began with a lot of enthusiasm and effort. In the first five days of the month, I averaged over 10000 steps a day. This was a mixture of walking to work, finishing moving, and extra activity (like disc golf and bowling). After that, being finished moving, then a brief sick bout cut the extra bits down a bit. There were still a few good days in there, but many were in the 6000 range or even below. As the month continued, my attention was drawn in other directions (my friend needed some aid, I went through the home selection process), so my steps never rebounded to the early highs.
In the end, despite not having any set goal to begin with, I finished the month with a little over 210k steps, which I think is a good baseline number to work off. I’ve set a goal of 250k steps for May, so we’ll see how that goes. At the very least, I have some numbers to work from to gauge my progress by. I hope this can bring me back to the progress I had been making.
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