So I want to note something that will probably never happen in my life ever again. For the past week, ending yesterday/Sunday, I reached 10,000 steps each day. It helps when the job you picked up for the week involves a lot of walking when you're working and a lot of milling about when you're not. That's the thing about being a runner for a television production: There are bouts of frenzy when you're literally running around, but when there isn't, you're pacing a lot trying to relieve the boredom. But a situation like that is never truly a waste; I got my steps in!
For the record, my high water mark was on Thursday, when I spent 14 hours getting stuff and then packing up around the Gophers Game, the latter half of it during a stinging downpour. I got in 19,667 steps, according to my Health app. I don't think I've ever walked that much in a day ever.
That strike day, by the way, spilled over into early Friday, so I got in, like, 3,000+ steps before I finally made it home. That day I got my shoes shined, I bought a hamburger for a co-worker, I got tested for COVID and I worked out ... and it probably didn't matter because I think me walking around the State Fair would have been enough for me to reach 10k alone.
Saturday, it turns out, was the closest call. I kind of thought that all the walking around downtown from one bar to another to make sure me and my friends were able to watch the game would have easily helped me reach 10k. According to the app, it wasn't. It took that laborious walk up and down Lyndale (with a pit stop to get ice cream at Crema Cafe/Sonny's) to reach that mark; I finished just under 12,000. And finally, Sunday I went to the Fair, and that's how I got my 10,000 steps in yesterday.
Ten thousand steps hasn't even been proven to be the level at which you attain good health. According to this article from the New York Times, the number 10,000 was a marketing gimmick by a Japanese company trying to cash in on the country's health craze in the wake of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. It manufactured a pedometer and gave it a name that, in Japanese pictographs, looked like a walking person and translated to "10,000 steps meter." That number seems aspirational -- high enough to make you believe that if you reach it, you're getting healthy, and yet it seems obtainable if you try hard enough. And so I think that's why it's stuck through now.
But what does the science say? At least according to that piece, 7-8,000 steps is enough. I have reached that ... a little more often, but probably not regularly, and maybe not even semi-regularly.
Oh, by the way, I decided I would stay in the whole day today 'cause it's Labor Day. Do you know how many steps the Health app says I've taken today? Eleven. Yep-yep-yep, that streak's over.
But for the past week, I was walkin', yes indeed:
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