It started out with me feeling like I was in a rut. I didn’t seem to be getting very far in life, my job stunk, and many of my aspirations and dreams were stuck on the side of the road. I had all the makings for the perfect pity party lined up and ready to go. I didn’t need another one of those again. I knew that I needed to do something, anything really to shake myself up even if it was just a little and put myself in motion. I needed a goal.
Since my fear of missing out on so many dreams was staring me in the face, I did not want a goal that was so big it would not get done. I needed something small enough that I could tackle yet big enough to give a real sense of accomplishment. It had to be something I could accomplish. That was the whole point at this stage. I needed a mark in the win column.
I had already tried to reach a 1,000 mile biking year and I enjoyed biking but again the rut thing raised its head. I could only seem to average about 600 miles a year and lately my average had been dropping. A lot of variables can come into play with biking such as weather, daylight, time available, not to mention desire that ebbs and tides. It takes an effort to get suited up to ride and it takes time to make a ride big enough to feel like you went somewhere. So even if I still had my yearly goal of getting in a 1,000 mile year I needed something to go along with it, just in case.
This goal needed to be something that could be done more often and was slightly more in my control. It had to be something that would be self motivating and yet small efforts would still pay dividends.
About this time there was talk of the 10,000 step exercise program. The idea is simple enough. Walk 10,000 steps a day and you would lose weight and become healthy or at least healthier. Since I am a numbers guy and a slight tech geek I have had an interest in pedometers. I had never gotten one though. So one day while in the local Wal-Mart I happened to notice a simple pedometer for under $4. My price point was met. My interest was piqued; I mean how do those things work anyway? I went ahead and bought myself a new play toy.
So now I had my toy. The first thing to do with it is learn how to use it. Set up is usually the toughest step. Figure out the average length of your stride and not only will the pedometer count your steps it will calculate how far you have traveled. This takes some effort. Finding out your average stride is a little like thinking about which step you take when you go bowling. If you are thinking about it, your whole rhythm is thrown off and you look like a total spaz. I tried to measure the sidewalk and see how many steps I took for a given distance. I got a different count almost every time. It all depended on my mood, speed, arm swing, phase of the moon, temperature, altitude, wind velocity and how well I was avoiding breaking my mothers back by not stepping on the cracks.
I finally decide to take a walk around the block twice and compare the steps with the distance as measured by my bikes trip computer. I ended up walking around that block several times and coming up with an average of 34 inches. Being a numbers guy I knew that some steps would be longer and some steps would be shorter but I was happy with this distance and thought that it would serve me well as a representation of my average stride.
At 6’2” I have a fairly long stride and when I get walking I can really move out. For those thinking that 34 inches doesn’t seem very big or that it seems incredibly huge let me give you some other numbers with which to compare. At 34 inches it takes 1872 steps to make a mile. That means that a 10,000 step day will cover about 5 1/3 miles. I have another friend that used to do the 10,000 step program by counting all her steps during the day and then getting on a treadmill at the end of the day to make up the difference. Being somewhat smaller than me her 10,000 steps worked out to about 4 miles.
I found a web site referenced from work talking about the 10,000 step plan and one of the better pieces of advice was to wear your pedometer for a few normal days to establish a base line. This gives you a place to start from. It was not a great place. I realized that being stuck in a cubicle does not afford one many opportunities to acquire large numbers of steps. That combined with snow on the ground in winter time limited me to about 1200 steps a day. That only worked out to 36,000 steps a month. That was about 3 ½ days worth on a 10,000 step plan. I had to think about this.
I went with the idea that 100,000 steps a month was doable. That was about 3 times what I was averaging on a normal day, so this would still require some effort. 100,000 steps a month would work out to 1.2 million steps in a year, so not only would there be effort there would have to be a commitment. Since this commitment was to no one else but me, it would require self motivation and determination if I was to succeed. This was just what I was looking for. I decided to go for it.
go to part 2
This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farr West.
No comments:
Post a Comment