Thursday, November 3, 2011

10,000 steps (May 6, 2008)

Heard a news report today that encouraged people, in the spirit of wellness and personal fitness, to try to walk 10,000 steps before some-date-or-other.

So I tried it. Well, at least I figured out how far that would be. I needed to take something to be dry-cleaned. The cleaners are 0.8 mile away, an easy walk. I counted steps: 1,800. Then another 1,800 back. Total 3,600 for a simple errand.

Doing the math, that would make 10,000 steps a little less than four and a half miles. (1,800 steps = 0.8, therefore 2,250 steps = 1 mile, 10K/2250 = 4.4 miles)

That might be a bit much for a single day (though I've done it many, many times), but not at all difficult for a couple days' worth of walking around. Just ride public transit on a regular basis, and you will get many opportunities to work in a few hundred steps.

Somewhere else I'd read that walking a total of 30 minutes a day was your best hedge against weight gain now, and heart trouble later in life. For seven years, I had a five-minute walk to get to my first bus that got me to work, and a ten-minute walk from the second bus to my place of employment. Reverse that at day's end, add it up, and bingo, 30 minutes of walking. I miss that commute.

1 comment:

bus15237 said...

What's the best way to prevent future health trouble? Walk a lot. Can you get in 10,000 steps a week? Can you get in 30 minutes a day? It doesn't have to be all at once.