Stepping out. (Now with cute puppy pic.)

[Chris Hobson]

I used to be a regular on the sporting forum here. Triathlons and distance running being my thing made it easy to do interesting write ups of my various challenges and activities. As I've grown a little older I have had to slow down a bit and staying active has become a bit more of a challenge. My right knee has been troublesome for quite a while now, no problem for day to day living but not really up to running any more. Cycling was OK to start with but eventually riding longer distances would make it sore too. A couple of years ago I set out to swim 500 miles in a year as a fundraiser for my local guide dogs charity. I wrote about this here at the time but just doing lots of swimming doesn't really make for interesting write ups, 4k swim yesterday, 4k swim today, I'm going to be swimming 4k tomorrow and the day after that too. Since then, swimming has been my go to activity followed by walking a few laps of the indoor running track at the gym along with Wifey who uses it as a warm down after her gym session. The knee mostly copes with walking even quite long distances. This routine has led us to start getting consistently good results on the step counter feature on our Garmin watches so we have started seeing how well we can do. My Garmin sets me a target every day which is dependent upon how many steps I'm doing day to day. Failing to make the target means that the following day's target is reduced, exceeding the target increases the target for the next day. It also gives me a count for the current streak, how many days I've gone without missing the target, six days at the time of writing. We live not far from the coast so we have done a few walks along the beach which is nice. Tomorrow we are taking part in a mass walk around the indoor running track at the gym as a fundraiser for a gym member who has motor neurone disease, so tomorrow's step count should be in the bag. One piece of good news is that my sore knee seems to be improving, so I'm feeling cautiously optimistic about that.

Edit
On the morning of the big walk my target is 9,760 steps.

 

[Chris Hobson]

Update.
Sunday morning's event has passed without a hitch. I hadn't been aware that there was an optional target distance of 21k/13.1 miles or half marathon distance. The running track is 200 metres so we had to do 105 laps in four hours. We didn't start bang on 08:00 as that is when the doors open on the weekend and we had to get ready, do the photo op and stuff so we got off about 08:15. That meant that at the quarter mark it looked as though I was five minutes off the pace but it didn't take long to wipe off the deficit and I finished with twenty minutes to spare. I mostly walked but did a little running too and my knee has held up OK but the soles of my feet are really sore. I reached 9,760 steps at 09:20 and the current score is 27,566. Whether I continue the current run depends on me being able to walk at all in the morning.

 

[Drummer]

I have bother with my feet from time to time, (English understatement is not dead) and find that some sort of cushioning or shock absorbing underfoot really makes a difference if resorted to at the first sign of trouble.
When I know I have to walk any distance I use Nordic walking poles. I have foam rubber, sheepskin with thick fleece, wet suit stuff - anything to soften the impact of the sole hitting a hard surface, always ready to deploy at the first twinge. It might look a bit silly but so far my feet have always recovered normality, for which I am profoundly grateful.

 

[Chris Hobson]

I wear good quality running shoes. I think that the problem is that since I have had to give up the running my feet have become a bit soft. A few hours later and the soreness is wearing off a little.

 

[Vonny]

As a regular 20+k steps walker, I've never had any problems with soreness in my Skechers. However, after visiting a chiropodist I've started with soreness in my little toe. I think she sanded the hard skin down too much.

Well done on your walk/run today @Chris Hobson 🙂

 

[SB2015]

Well done @Chris Hobson . I hope that your feet continue to feel better. Good shoes/trainers are essential.

 

[Chris Hobson]

I've never really had a problem with sore feet and blisters before now, apart from the Rudolf Romp which I did wearing boots because the conditions were so muddy. Anyway I'm fine today, legs a little stiff but if you do thirteen miles without training for it, I think that is to be expected. I'm encouraged that my underlying fitness level is good enough to do that.

 

[Chris Hobson]

Since I mentioned the Rudolf Romp, here's the write up that I did at the time.

Rudolph Romp 1st December 2018

Most years I have started to wind down on the fitness training by this time of the year. I like to tick over gently during the dark months, just doing enough so as not to get totally out of shape so I can be ready to hit the ground running when Spring starts to dawn. This year some health...

forum.diabetes.org.uk

 

[Chris Hobson]

Well I eventually managed a nine day run of exceeding my step targets as they kept on going up and up to 12,000 and beyond. Mainly thanks to this guy. This is Ollie, I have been visiting my daughter in the North East and we have done lots of doggy walking and have visited Beamish Museum. At Beamish Ollie met lots of school kids and melted the girls with his off the scale cuteness.

 

[helli]

Congratulations @Chris Hobson and Ollie.
Dog walking is a fantastic motivation to get out whatever the weather. If I had a larger house, I would definitely have one as I always had a dog when growing up.

 

[Chris Hobson]

At home we only have cats, they are less work but you can't really take them for walks. For those interested, Ollie is sixteen weeks old, he looks like a golden retriever but he's actually a cross between a border collie and a labradoodle. Have you spotted his little bow tie?

 

[Chris Hobson]

I'm revisiting this thread as I'm currently on a four day streak of achieving the step targets set by my watch just by living my supposedly active life. My car needed some tyres so I go to a tyre place on the outskirts of Beverley and, while my tyres are being fitted, I go for a walk to the shops and back. I have a woodwork project planned but my workshop is currently full of junk so several trips to the tip are in order. Walking back and forth to the car with armfuls of crap and old wood gets the steps up as does the unloading process at the other end. There was also a grocery shopping trip to Asda, always productive, and a trip to take Millie the cat to the vet. Our vet is in Hornsea and all the parking spots near the vet are taken up by summer visitors so I had to park half a mile away. All this added up to a nice healthy step score of around ten thousand per day. Tomorrow I'm doing various repairs to the fabric of the workshop so, moving around a lot though not necessarily walking so we'll have to see.

Edit: Six days of reaching the target now. Daily average is over ten thousand. I don't think that day seven is going to be added as I'm grounded while waiting in for the gas engineer to come and service our boiler.