10,000 Steps a day.

Ah. The ever popular 10,000 steps a day adage. Made popular by the smartwatch (Fitbit originally). Where did this recommendation really come from? Turns out that it isn’t necessarily based on hard science, but is a good idea anyway.

I’d consider myself a fairly “fit” person, I’ve sporadically weight lifted for years. I’ve ran several marathons and countless shorter races. I’ve done quite a few bike races at 100+ miles. So it should be easy for me to consistently get 10,000 steps right?! Turns out that when I’m not actively focused on running a marathon or doing a longer bike race, I fall way short of 10,000 steps. Like embarrassingly so.

So I tried to get 10,000 steps every day for two weeks. Here’s what that looked like.

• I started running short 2 milers at night to see if that would carry me over the 10,000 mark. Turns out you only turn over about 2,000 steps per mile ran/walked. 2 miles is only 4,000 steps. This is not very much for those of us with office jobs.
• Open concept houses work well at night. I ended up doing “laps” from our kitchen, through our living room, and back again. Several (like 100’s of times) laps per night. This is actually fairly therapeutic.

Will I continue this habit? I’m going to try. I’m going to make this one of the things I do and this should become easier as I head into marathon training again.