oN 10,000 Steps

March 21, 2024: Yesterday I marked 500 consecutive days of 10,000 daily steps. It seems a small feat but my commitment to never miss a day turned out some hilarious stories. What began as a habit to attain a minimum level of daily movement morphed into a borderline ridiculous compulsion. Here's what I mean.

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500 days in a row. It's oddly satisfying to type that out, even though the feat was simply 10,000 daily steps.

Not one day out of five hundred was missed, including when I was sick, traveling or had 14 hours of back-to-back meetings. And that feels good. 

In 2022, I decided to buy a Garmin watch and start tracking my steps, increasingly wary of the sedentary nature of my desk job and struck by the ubiquitous "sitting is the new smoking" mantra (which of course it isn't, but the warning remains catchy). 

Depending on the season I was still playing competitive football 2-3 times weekly, but I was painfully aware that on most other days I would succumb to my work and spend too many hours entirely inactive. Weight training and running - two pillars of my younger self's exercise routine - had been on hiatus, given a back seat to the grabbiness of career ambition.

10,000 steps is not a huge amount. It's a figure some people may hit naturally if they walk to work, leave the office for lunch or do errands in the evening. But I found that on most days, I needed to think about how and when I would get my steps in.

Inevitably this meant several 11pm walks, a ritual I came to love while strolling the neighbourhood with a podcast or catching up with friends in a different timezone. 

There were also some days where I had to do the ridiculous. For example:

1. Around day 80, I was at home working late and glanced at my watch to see that it was 11.51pm and I had nearly 15 minutes of walking to do. Panic. I was still wearing my jeans, belt and buttoned shirt as I leapt downstairs, threw on my trainers and ran out the door. I sprinted in a straight line down the road as fast as I could and hit the 10,000 steps just 23 seconds before midnight.

2. One Saturday night I was at a warehouse nightclub with a group of friends. At 11pm I noticed I still had 45 minutes of steady walking remaining - steps that couldn't be accumulated on a crowded dancefloor - so my wonderful partner offered to join me in doing laps of this mammoth warehouse with electronic music booming in the background. We were not sober and must have seemed mad to the bouncers who watched us walk from the bar to the washrooms to the dancefloor and back again in seemingly neverending loops.

3. Madness took on new meaning during a flight from London to Athens. The flight was due to land after midnight Greek time, meaning I needed to reach 10k before I boarded the plane. I'd miscalculated my steps that day, so found myself frantically pacing Gatwick's South Terminal with time running out. Boarding was called but I ignored it, nervously eyeing the shrinking queue every time I walked past the gate. Then, when every other passenger had boarded and "Gate closing" was flashing across the screen, I walked up to the desk agent as if to show my boarding pass but exclaimed in fake shock that I had left my passport in the washroom and I'd be right back. This was worth another 150 steps. It wasn't enough though, and I boarded the flight with 400 steps (about 4 minutes) of walking left. This was worrying because planes are short and my seat to the washroom looked like it was only about 50 steps. But I had no other option so when the seatbelt sign switched off I headed for the rear. It turned out to be only 30 steps. I had to walk back and forth from my seat so many times I was getting weird looks, including from the stewardesses who had started trying to serve the drinks. I waited by the washroom for them to finish their work and then kept pacing, deflecting from the curious stares of other passengers by chewing on the end of my pen and pretending to be in deep thought. If they believed me to be an anxious flyer or a troubled young man, fine. As long as nobody thought I was some kind of terrorist. In the end, nobody said anything and I got my steps.

4. The most frustrating occasion was during a customary late night walk wherein I was on track to hit 10k at around 11.45pm. At 11.40, my watch randomly buzzed and shut itself off, then automatically restarted in what looked like factory mode. I fiddled with the buttons but couldn't make it go back to normal. I managed to turn it off and kept walking, praying this didn't mean the end of my streak (or the watch!). Plugged into its charger at home, the watch turned on perfectly fine but it was now twenty past midnight and the previous day's step count read just 4089. An hour of walking steps were missing. I was livid. I searched Garmin's customer service number to see if they were open (of course not) and if steps could be manually added retroactively (also no). I scoured online discussion forums for help and at last found a clever suggestion to change the time on my phone back by a few hours and then sync it with my watch. Success. The watch thought it was approaching 8pm the previous day instead of the real time of 1am. Renewed with energetic indignation, I immediately strode out the door for another hour of marching in the dark. When I got home I reset my watch time and cursed my commitment to my 10,000 daily steps.

There have been days when I've gone for long walks in freezing snowstorms, or while on important business calls. And I wonder how I became entrapped by this gamified idea of step counts.

But every time I say to myself, "You've managed to do 10,000 steps every single day until now. What's so different about today?"

That question has been a driving force to get me out the door even when I don't want to budge. That's the power of momentum.

Steps can also be a social activity. I frequently go for walks with my partner or friends, unpacking our days' thoughts. Sometimes it's like we're engaging in a more casual form of the touted Walk and Talk therapy method. Some of the most inspirational and vulnerable conversations I've participated in have been while on these walks.

And in fact doing 10,000 steps became a foundation for me to go to the gym and start running again (ancillary benefit of the latter being I don't need to walk if it's a run day). My health is now the result of stacking several good habits together, all of which rest on top of my daily steps.

So if you are considering adding more walking to your daily routine - I urge you to do it. It's easy, it's effective and it will make a surprisingly big difference to your life. 

I'm now aiming for 1,000 consecutive days of 10,000 steps and am keen to share them with as many friends as possible. If you ever fancy a walk, just let me know!