20,000 steps a day

Throughout the last decade I've shifted through large bucket-list-style ideas.

Maybe they're goals, maybe they're just tasks, dreams, or hopes. But in general I'm searching for something that's large, and a real challenge to accomplish.

I have friends who find joy in the completion of a task. For me I enjoy the process, the leading up to, the working toward, the day in and day out.

Sometimes I don't know what to do when I've met a big goal. But, boy do I love getting there. And, then, sometimes just as quick I'm done and want to move off to another thing.

I used to feel there was something missing or lacking in these endeavors, that I owed it to myself to stick to through thick and thin. There's value in persistence, continuing to push and try. But there's also value in knowing when to stop, when to take a break, when to shift.

There's also no telling when one of these big ideas will strike, push me to give it my all.

Enter walking

Recently it's been walking.

I like running, first and foremost. But over the last few weeks my life has been rather busy, and I haven't had the time I'd like to get out on the trail.

So I opted instead to drag out a walking treadmill and put it under my standing desk.

This isn't my first time attempting to maneuver the contraption into my life.

But walking and working isn't quite as easy as I imagined. Your body tends to tire out quickly, and it's easy to just stop and sit down.

But, thanks to the power of YouTube, I stumbled on some videos about walking 20k steps a day——the final selling point of one of said-videos was the possibility of abs. Needless to say I fell for it, and decided to give it a try.

Running, like I said, is my jam. I've done it mainly because my lifestyle is so sedentary otherwise, and it's a forcing mechanism to get me out of the office a few times per week. But it's something that's hard when life and work pull me in (of my own accord I'll admit).

Trying it out

So, for the last two weeks I've been trying it out. And so far I've met my goal each day.

I bought a cheap pedometer online, clipped it to my shorts, and use it to track things (turns out Apple Watch isn't great at knowing what's going on when I'm typing at a computer all day and walking at the desk).

The first few days were hard. I was exhausted, just wanted to sleep and take a nap, and my body didn't quite know what to do with this enforced regime. It's not the exercise alone was a problem, but walking is a different movement than running, and my muscles got quite tired from it.

And, it takes a long time.

I've calculated that at my stride length and height, and at the 3.8mph max for the treadmill, it takes me just a little over 2.5 hours each day.

Not generally a problem when I work from home and my days are far longer.

My goal is to do this for 90 days and see how I feel. Something simple, quite doable during the workdays; and on weekends I just need to get up early enough to get a run in first thing in the morning.

Results

So how do I feel? Fantastic. At the end of two weeks I'm loving it. A little sore, in need of new shoes, but really happy. It gives me something big to reach for each day at the start of the morning, to get on the treadmill and move.

That 2.5 hours takes a while, but isn't impossible. Especially if I have a few hours of meetings on a given day.

I don't know if I'll manage to go non-stop for the next 90 days——life gets busy at times. But in general I really want to try for this and see how I feel overall.

Of course, on the days I choose to run, I take that amount of steps out of the walking.

Why?

For you, if there's some big thing you're thinking of doing, I say go for it. You might fail, it might not work out, but it's fun trying; it's fun dreaming, fun doing something big, fun having a challenging task to look forward to. Here's to more walking.