53 Days on a 10K step streak, silly!
So a couple of months ago I noted that my daily average steps for the year were a little below 10K a day.
So I endeavoured to BOOOST them by walking, well, more than 10K steps a day.... in order to get the daily average for the year up to > 10K.
I'd done this by November, the previous month of October was a nice month for walking.
In the process of looking at my stats, I stumbled upon what I thought was a pretty dismal 38 day 10K streak record, and I wanted more...
So I duly spent the next 53 days walking a minimum of 10K steps a day, but by day 54 I'd had enough, it's pretty silly for me uppiny what is normally a pretty varied natural step count to 10K a day...
Lessons learned again that I already knew!
OK a couple of months ago I was a teeny tiny bit below myb 10K a day average, around 9.8K a day I think that was very easy to increase back up to 10K a day... especially when yr going through a more running than usual phase which I was.
Basically in a typical week I'll do...
2 days of around 7-8K
3 days of around 10-11K (these are the normal running days
1 day around 6K
1 day around 15K (usually my long run day
So the long day averages it all out to around 10K a day average.
When I was doing my streak, I'd obvs be fine on 4 of those days, but then three days a week I found myself doing silly things like spending 20 minutes on the trampoline or pacing around the kitchen to get my step count up.
Also when I'd hit the 10K a day, I'd be like 'well I'm not going out to get beer, you do it' - no point I've done my steps!
Led by my device....?
Totally, it was really silly, but then again I do actually like walking and do think having a higher step count is better than lower, but one does need the time and just as importantly the routine which allows one to get those steps in naturally, rather than forcing it!
Final thoughts...
I'm quite happy to get back to my natural step pattern, it makes life a lot easier, and another bonus is I now get to look forward to having a 'monster' step day once a week to make sure I make up for all the slightly slack days!
It's easy to get obsessed about such things. I've had long streaks on Duo Lingo and Wordle, but they really don't matter. I used to have health insurance from work where they gave you a pedometer and you could get rewards for getting over 10k steps each day. If you are running then extra walking steps won't make much difference to health, but I guess it gets some people out more. On days when I work from home I may only do a couple of thousand steps and even when I go to the office I may do 10k. It's going to be over an hour of walking each day.
I expect that having these things tracked online makes them more compulsive, but general happiness is more important.
you've got a similar approach to me - it's all about balance, it's silly being led by a tracker for the most part, but I do still enjoy a short-term tracker challenge!
I can be a sucker for a streak. We can track so much these days.