BYP Challenge — 100,000 steps in a week?
100,000 steps in a week? Me? 100,000?! That’s a ridiculous amount, normally I only manage around 6500 a day! How was I going to accomplish such a feat? Despite my (At the time) below average step score, I was still going to give it a shot and in the week starting 30th Jan to the 5th Feb, nothing was going to stop me from getting my step target and beating this challenge!
My Samsung Galaxy S6 was to count the steps. No FitBit, no Apple Watch, just my phone. Surely there’s a problem with accuracy there! I had to make sure that wherever I went, my phone came with me. I wasn’t going to miss a single stride!
So, Monday came and I had to figure out how the hell I was gonna’ do this. A normal working day sees me get around 6 to 7 thousand steps, but I knew that I was going to have to do a lot more than just walk to work and back. With this in mind, I decided to go for a walk on my lunch break and see where that would get me. 8938 steps. Not bad, not great. It’s actually quite pathetic in the grand scheme of things!
On to Tuesday. Things were looking up! Going for a meal in the evening really helped with the score I managed to get. We went to Teppanyaki near the Museum of Science and Industry and overall I got 10,754. A much-needed improvement. The meal was great too, I recommend. More steps were needed.
Wednesday came, and that saw me get to 9377 steps overall. Not too bad, more than what I would usually get. I actually went on a 20 minute run that day. I realised I only had 6700 steps, and therefore I didn’t really have a choice in the matter! Despite not being overly keen on running, the whole process of going for a quick jog around a local park and then getting in and having a shower, was admittedly satisfying.
The numbers in the first 3 days looked good on paper, but in truth they really weren’t. If I was going to get 100,000, I needed to do a lot better than what I was doing, and I knew that for a fact. But apparently, that didn’t resonate with me on the Thursday, and my steps declined from the previous day. 8904. Silly me.
Friday came and I realised that I needed 62,027 steps in 3 days. That’s a lot of walking and running. Luckily, I had a plan. I was already going out that night with a couple of friends around Manchester which I knew would take me into the early hours of Saturday morning. I was hoping that this would get me a total of 20,000 steps collectively. Turns out my shenanigans only managed to get me 14,041 steps. Damn.
Saturday saw me get 11,891, after walking to and around a local retail park. Not good. Worrying in fact. By the 6th day I only had 63,905/100,000. I was anxious. There was no way that I was going to get 36,095 steps on the Sunday. How far was I really going to walk to achieve this goal?
Sunday came. What was I going to do? I tell you what I was going to do. I was going to get 100,000 steps and there was no stopping me. First of all, I walked from my Nans back to my house, a long the canal and through a couple of parks. Around 4 miles, but it was still not enough. So I walked more, and more and more. Up to Tandle Hill Park, down to Tesco’s, to Asda. Anywhere that would get my score up! It wasn’t enough. I needed 2000 more. My feet were murdering, I had blisters, but I couldn’t just stop. I was gonna’ go running again, like the run I did on Wednesday and hey presto… I DID IT! 100,100 steps overall! My feet were burning, I was limping everywhere, but the challenge was complete. I walked a total of 20 miles that Sunday and did 36195 steps overall. The most ever recorded on my phone and I’ve had it for nearly two years! Imagine all the calories I burnt! In fact let me just check. 1864 kcal. That’s awesome!
So, I beat the challenge and achieved the big 100,000, but what did I learn from it? Well I learnt not to give up. On the Friday I could have easily just abandoned the challenge and I was considering doing so, but I didn’t and I’m quite proud of myself actually! Not a lot of people can say they’ve walked over 20 miles in a day just to have bragging rights, but I guess they’re not weird like me. But I did it!
Who knows what the next challenge is going to be, you’re going to have to find out! Thanks for reading!
Jack — BYP
#BeYourPotential
