Pedometry

I don’t know if ‘Pedometry’ is actually a word. Probably not, actually. But I really don’t care. That’s what I’m going to call it.

Does everyone know what a pedometer is? I’m pretty sure you do, though probably by it’s more commonly-used name, ‘step-counter’. Anyways, has anyone ever used one? Joggers will often use them to try and get a general idea of how far they’ve traveled in their exercise. But I’m no jogger. Yet I still have and use one.

I bought it probably a month ago. It had occurred to me that in a typical workday at Wal-Mart, I was walking pretty much the whole time. On days where I’d get called to do cash, it would obviously be less, but I figured I covered a lot of ground in any given day. And on days when I would walk home, whatever that number was would be even higher. So I decided to find out, and I bought a pedometer.

From the little booklet that came with the instrument, I learned that a healthy day of walking is about 10,000 steps. I had no idea what number I was doing, but I figured it had to be more than that. The first day I used it, I think I did about 16,000 steps. Since then I’ve done about that usually. Some days it’s substantially less, because I spend hours at the till. Oh and I’ve also learned that it’s about a 2000-step walk from Wal-Mart to my house, one way. I think one day I walked almost 21,000. That’s pretty much my record so far.

Someday perhaps I’ll actually use it as part of a training exercise. For now, I’ll keep doing what I’ve always done, and that is wearing it purely for curiosity sake; simply to know how many steps I take in a day. I don’t know if I’m doing anything with this information. But for $6, I figure at least it wasn’t money TOO foolishly spent.

And P.S. I just realized my previous 2 entries were both posted at 5:16 PM. Weird.

-Bernier