After my visit to the emergency room on February 23rd and my subsequent diagnosis of heart disease, I had to start building myself back up gradually. On the 23rd, my FitBit recorded 643 steps. That week still ended with an almost respectable 46,548 steps...but only because I'd been walking every day that week up until then. The next week I recorded a mere 28,214 steps...the lowest I'd ever seen since I activated my first pedometer. I decided I'd aim to increase by 10,000 steps per week until I got back up to speed.
And my progress was steady: 36,644; 40,725; 51,711; 74,523; 73,062.
And then I had to change my battery. And there was a little glitch, so that the steps for the day--13,528, were counted twice, which led to the week showing 109,024 steps. I'd hit some 100,000 step weeks in the past, but it'd been awhile, and it really caught my eye and brain. The next week was back to the increase by 10,000 that I'd been aiming for at 87,007, but after that I pushed up to 103,365...and this time it was for real. But it takes a fair amount of time, attention, and determination to hit 100,000 steps in a week, and I wasn't up for that, so the next three weeks were at 79,516; 85,763; 92,907.
And then I decided to give a shot at the time, attention, and determination thing. I gave myself a challenge: 1 million steps in 10 weeks...meaning 100,000 steps per week...meaning 14,286 steps per day.
But my reward program gives me a bonus 50 points when I go over 50,000 steps, and another 50 points bonus if I go over 100,000, so I decided to shoot for 101,000 per week. Because those points actually translate into money: $10 per 1,000 points. Not good money, obviously, since it takes some time to collect 1,000 points, but still, it's free money. More or less. You do have to pay taxes on it. (Fuckers.)
So I set off to do it. And for five weeks, I knocked it back:
I ran into some problems on Week 6, though. My spine started aching pretty bad. So I broke out the heating pad and got back on my bike for a bit, which is more difficult than walking but much, much better in terms of impact--since there's zero of that.
This was the first week where the pressure was on for that last day, but I just buckled down and got to it. Crisis averted!
As of week 6 my total mileage is 288.23...which means that if I want to hit the big 500 by the end of week ten I've got some catching up to do...I am 11.77 miles behind pace!
And then Week 7 started. And after a good walk on Tuesday, my legs and feet were just aching. In an I'll Never Walk Again way. So I got off of my feet, broke out the heating pad, and hit the Ibuprofen. Which helped. The next day I cut my grass, but didn't actually go for a walk, too, as I usually do. So I still hit a good number of steps, since my lawn is so damned big (about four miles's worth of steps), but not the 20,000 plus that is normal for grass cutting day. And then my friendgirl asked me to walk on Wednesday. And it went so well that I still had the strength to go cut my sister's grass...which is less than half the steps of my lawn, but which still makes for a pretty big day on top of a walk.
Taking it a little bit easier and using the heating pad and Ibuprofen allowed me to make it through to the end of the week, and...
...which brings the Grand Total to date to...
So...seven weeks and 335.79 miles down, three weeks and 164.21 miles to go! (Also 722,150 steps down, 277,850 steps to go.) My anal retentive / OCD mind would really like to end this ten week one million steps journey on an even 500 miles, but clearly that is not possible unless I seriously adjust my stride length. I'm hitting right around 47 miles per week, so while I should (GWandtheCDR) be able to hit my one million steps by the last day of week ten, I suspect that I will be about 30 miles short of my 500. Nothing that can't be cured in four or five days, but, y'know....
ANYway...here I go out for the first day of Week 8.
Speaking of Week 8...
The first couple of days went quite well: 16,060 steps, 16,395 steps. And then it got better: 17,268, 20,263, the later being Wednesday. But late Wednesday night, after eating dinner, I got up...slowly, slowly, since the Rx to lower my already good blood pressure was giving me some blackout problems when I move from prone to standing position...I and stood by the sofa for a moment to make sure all was well...and all seemed well...and I took about six steps before everything went black and I fell, unconscious, to the floor. I came back almost immediately--I know this because the plate I'd been carrying in one hand was still spinning around on the floor. But I was really hurt. My knees felt like they'd been hit with hammers, so I was pretty sure that I had crashed down on them. My right ankle was really hurting, too, and I was pretty sure that my left foot's pinkie toe was broken. For a minute I thought I was going to have to call for help, as I really didn't think I could get up. But I wasn't ready for that sad cliche yet, so I waited, and then finally managed to get to my feet. But it was pretty clear that damage had been done.
I spent the night with ibuprofen, a heating pad, and very little sleep. And I tried getting on the stationary bike for a bit, but it was clear that I couldn't do any extensive walking, and even the bike wasn't without pain, so I only clocked in 5,112 steps for that day.
Today I'm feeling better, and I did a few turns on the bike, but at 6:08 pm I'm still only at 9,371 steps, which puts me 18,000 steps away from my week's goal with only one day to get those steps. I clearly need more. But the bike is really kicking my ass, and it takes about ten minutes on it to get 1,000 steps...so I don't think that that's going to get me as close to my goal as I want to get today.
So I'm thinking about trying a walk. I really want to stick to my goal.
News as it happens.
As it happens:
Yep, did it.
There have been some challenges I hadn't expected to encounter on this 1 million steps / "500 mile" journey, but I'm still on it...and into the clubhouse turn! Wish me luck, ahm gonna need it, chile.
As of Week 8: 383.6 miles, 825,040 steps in,
116.4 miles and174,960 steps to go. (And, btw, average of 2,151 steps per mile.)
Week 9 was just humming along at a fine pace: Sunday 15,085; Monday 15,458; Tuesday 21,199; Wednesday 16,266. (68,008 sub-total with three days remaining, which meant I only had to average 10,997.3 steps per day for my remaining three days in order to hit 101,000 for the week. Lookin' good, feelin' good. But I still wanted to hit my 15,000 per day goal, so after I dropped Joe off at work, instead of going home, I drove down the street to a park I'd not visited before. I walked for awhile before I happened onto a course which had markers every tenth of a mile. And I was pretty tired and in need of some distraction, so I started counting my steps between the markers. Hmmm. It was around 200. But that couldn't be right. So I counted another one. About 200. Another. About 200. It was pretty consistent. The trouble being that I had previously calculated my steps per mile at 2,100-ish, and 200 per 1/10th mile would clearly be more like 2,000-ish. And then it hit me: my stride length must be off...which would not affect my steps, of course...and steps are the most important part to me...but it would make a difference in my mileage. In fact, it would mean that for every mile that my tally recorded, I had actually walked 1.05 miles. Which isn't much...until you start hitting almost 50 miles per week, in which case the "50" miles is actually 52.5 miles. Mmm-hmm. And it also means that when I hit my 1 million steps in another week and a half (he said)...I will also have hit 500 miles. No extra two and a half days necessary.
Well. I like that.
So I've re-set my stride length and I assume that henceforth my mile count will be accurate, but I checked and it didn't affect the figures that were previously recorded. Well, that sucks, but of course it is understandable. This FitBit thing isn't retroactive. But henceforth...I'm hittin' it fo' rail.
P.S. Come to think of it...that measly .05 means that my "As of Week 8: 383.6 miles" is actually "As of Week 8: 402.78 miles"...and pretty much means that I've been hitting 50 miles (and sometimes more) every week for the past 8 weeks. Just sayin', sir.
ANYway...Week 9 was my best week yet, with 107,945 steps and a recorded 51.24 miles...which I'm pretty sure is lowballing it, as I didn't adjust my step counter until halfway through my Thursday walk. But I'm just going to let that be. Added to the adjusted total from weeks 1 through 8, that puts me at 402.78 (383.6 X 1.05) + 51.24 = 454.02 miles and 932,985 steps, so if I can just maintain an even strength for seven more days, I will hit my 500 miles / 1 million steps in ten weeks goal. Woo-hoo! And then? Well, I don't know. I'm thinking about walking 500 more...just to be the man who walks a thousand miles to fall down at your door.
But that's for week eleven.
Meanwhile, week 9 looked like this:
I probably could have pushed my Saturday to hit the 15,000 steps per day goal...and would have liked to have done it, since this was the first week in which I actually had a shot at hitting the goal every one of the seven days...but my sister was in from out of town for a visit, so I just nipped out for a quick one. We are also in the midst of a massive heat wave, so my measly 4 mile walk felt like double or triple, anyway. But maybe that can be an extra Week 10 goal: hitting 15,000 steps every day. Tough...but possible.
Week 10: Mission Accomplished day came early. Wednesday afternoon, my counter hit 9,627 steps...and that meant
1 million steps / 500 miles in ten weeks. Finished 3 1/2 days early...and Johnny Cash was there to witness it.
And there was much rejoicing.
Human nature being what it is...or, at least, MY human nature...that's going to make it harder to push for 15,000 steps today, tomorrow, Friday, and Saturday...but it might could happen. We'll see how it falls out.
Thursday I went back to the park with the 1/10th mile markers (8/10th of a mile total) and got down to some measuring.
11:28/1,819/.92/-1089
steps to 1/10th: 187
steps to 2/10th: 189
steps to 3/10th: 190
steps to 4/10th: 181
First round trip: 11:43/3,409/1.72/ -1225
Second round trip: 12:06/5791/2.92/-1423
So. Pretty consistent in the number of steps from one marker to the next. And so far as the laps are concerned, it's
Lap 1: 15 minutes, 1,590 steps, .8 miles, 136 calories
Lap 2: 23 minutes, 2,382 steps, 1.2 miles, 198 calories
Hmmm. Clearly I did something different on that second lap. Oh, yeah, I remember: I was trying to even it up to 2 miles. So that would be 28 minutes, 3,972 steps, 2.0 miles, and 334 calories. And that would mean that I was getting 1,986 steps per mile, which is pretty consistent over those two miles AND is a hell of a lot closer to 2,000 than 2,100 or whatever, so I guess my stride adjustment worked out pretty darned well. (In other words, my FitBit measured 2 miles in steps, and the markings on the tracks indicated that I had traveled 2 miles. Previously there would have been a difference of a couple of hundred steps in two miles.)
So the grand total:
So I did the shit out of that goal. And even better, despite some steep heart problems in the past couple of days and a broken toe which has really been kicking up the pain lately, I had my best week and my best day ever on this last week (since starting the FitBit journey in May of 2018). Woo hoo!
And now? Think I'm going to take it easy for a day or two. I'm kind of worn out.
And hey, check it out: in ten weeks, I only missed getting at least 10,000 steps in a day six times.
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