Stepping Up 30K

By now everyone should have heard the warnings about prolonged sitting. The research is clear that our modern lifestyles, largely free of the manual labor that agriculture and manufacturing used to demand, have made us soft. Most jobs are desk jobs now, and all those hours of sitting need to be counterbalanced somehow to avoid negative health effects.

Standing desks and under-desk walking pads have emerged as alternatives to prolonged sitting at a traditional desk. If you feel like you have been sitting too long—and your smart watch probably has a setting that will remind you to move at certain intervals—then you can hit a button to raise your motorized desk for use while you stand. And why just stand at your desk when you can walk at it? Motorized walking pads are scaled-down treadmills that allow you to walk in place as you work.

I have a traditional desk in my home office and I don’t plan to replace it. I also don’t plan to buy a walking pad. They are inexpensive but appear to be poorly made in most cases—online reviews are generally unfavorable. But I do have a cost-free option already: pacing. Yes, pacing! Done in the company of others, it’s sure to get on everyone’s nerves. For someone like me who works exclusively from home, it’s an easy way to burn a few extra calories. Last night’s shift was especially quiet, so I made lots of laps of the home office and built my step count without neglecting my responsibility to my employer. By the end of my shift I already had surpassed 13,000 steps!

Starting the day so ambitiously put an idea into my head: why not go for Garmin Connect’s Stepping Up 30K badge today? I earned the Stepping Up 25K badge back on February 26; the 30,000 steps required for the Stepping Up 30K badge would be a new single-day record for me. So, I went for it … and I got it. I had to spend about 2.5 hours on the treadmill in the home gym later in the day, but I got it. And it kind of fried my legs. I was glad to be done.

The Stepping Up 25K and Stepping Up 30K badges seemed like improbable goals when I mentioned them last September. Now I’m wondering when I will go for Stepping Up 40K and Stepping Up 50K. One thing seems certain: I won’t try to earn those badges with only indoor activities. The tedium of today’s effort was almost too much. Nice, long, multi-hour hikes in the woods … I think that’s the right approach for those higher levels. But that also means I will need good weather, and I wonder when such long hikes will be more attractive options than long bike rides.