50k Steps in a Day

[Scott1989]

anyone ever gets 50,000 steps in one day? how long did  it take?.. I got 30.000 once it took about 3 separate 1 and 30 minute walks trying to see if I can hit 50,000 

Moderator edit: subject for clarity 

[WendyB]

@Scott1989Congrats on your 40K Woot!

[Scott1989]

i haven't even got close to it again in months sadly my highest as been like 16000   winter sucks! doing 90% of mine arching in front of the tv it takes forever... I'm trying to get 10K everyday for 365 days.

my mom hit her 50 K this week! I still haven't come close lol 35 K was my best a week ago haven't hit that i a year or more

Moderator edit: merged reply

[JuanJoFitbit]

Wow, 50k is a lot. Unfortunately, I haven't reached that amount steps yet but it has been one of it's one of my goals for this year.

@Scott1989 that's amazing! How old is she? I feel bad that I became a little bit lazy since the pandemic started and I need to change this bad habit as soon as possible hahaha

[Scott1989]

She turned 65 this year.

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[shipo]

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@Scott1989 wrote:

She turned 65 this year.

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LOL, you gotta watch out for us old farts; I turned 64 this year and most weeks I log at least 100,000 steps.  Last fall I volunteered as a polling place worker and ended up being a "runner" shuttling back and forth between the polling room and the parking lot where the queue of voters was being organized; I hit just over 55,000 steps that day, 10,000 more than I'd ever logged before.  🙂

[t.parker]

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@Scott1989 wrote:

She turned 65 this year.

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Sounds like an opportunity to crack 65000 steps 💪 I don't think I ever reached 50k. I don't track that but my best probably is around 45k (marathon in 4hrs 6min at average 184spm = little over 45k steps). I may have walk some more on that day but I hardly believe I reached 50k. I can run but I'm just too lazy to walk 😂

[BamaDan]

I haven't and can't see it happening anytime soon but I did see somebody I knew on Facebook that posted her 50,000 step badge a few years ago. That's about 22 miles. You'd have to be in great shape and likely run to get that. It would take a long time to get 22 miles walking. My best day was 20,000 but I'm in terrible shape.

[shipo]

It is a common misconception that runners log lots of steps, and while true to a degree, I don't know any runners who typically hit even 40,000 steps in a day.

True story, back when I was 59 I was looking forward to racing in the 60-64 and 60-69 year old age group, so when my boss roped me into a fitness challenge the fall before I turned 60, I took a whack at setting a personal record for the number of miles I could run for the two months of the challenge.  In October of that year I ran 350 miles, and in November I followed that up with another 325 miles; during that time I cracked the 40,000 step threshold exactly once, on Thanksgiving day when I went out for an 18.25-mile run, which accounted for 29,053 steps; I racked up another 11,000 or so steps working in the kitchen and playing with the kids that day.  In that two month stretch I averaged about 29,500 steps per day.  Why so few?  Because runners typically log fewer steps per mile, even when they are doing a slow training run like my Thanksgiving run.  To that point, the "average" walker logs about 2,000 steps per mile, when I'm on a slow training run I log between 1,500 and 1,600 steps per mile, and when I'm racing, I log about 1,200 per mile for a 5K race and more like 1,300 per mile for races in the 10-mile to half-marathon range.

[t.parker]

@shipo runners are more time-efficient. Less distance but also less time is taken to run it. There is no direct connection between steps and distance. The key to a higher number of steps is cadence, not distance. You can run the same distance and end up with a different number of steps if you change cadence. Today, 10 miles run gave me approx. 18900 steps (. Time of run 1hr:19min. If I ran slower but with the same cadence, the same distance would give me more steps but also would be less time-efficient. The runners are more time-efficient because the running cadence is higher than walking but I agree there are not many runners crushing 40k steps 🙂 I can see some reasons. One is time (runners may run because it's more time-efficient than walking). Two, runners very rarely look at steps. More often they are into pace, distance, time, or elevation gain so there is no drive to get more steps. Frankly, I'm happy if I have 2 hours available for my exercise which may give me approx. 22k steps, for the whole day I may get 25k steps and that's it. I would have to spend a lot more time walking to get a similar number. So it is and it is not a misconception. Runners can definitely log steps faster but it doesn't mean they will log more daily. Even if I ramp up my cadence to 186spm and will go with the slowest possible pace for that cadence it would require 3h34m to get 40k steps. This is way more time than I can afford unless it's a race 🙂 Daily? Let somebody else do it 😂

[Scott1989]

That's incredible!!

[shipo]

@t.parker, something is waaaay off about your numbers, I would argue there is no way you ran 10-miles in 79 minutes and logged 18,900 steps; that works out to a cadence of 239 steps per minute, a rate which is completely unsustainable.  Looking back at my logs for my last 10-mile run at that pace the activity log from my Fitbit shows the following:

• Distance: 10.02 miles
• Time: 1:19:33
• Pace: 7:56 minutes per mile
• Steps: 13,079
• Cadence (computed): 164.5 steps per minute

Your computed cadence rate of 239 is faster than most sprinters use in a 100-meter race.

As for there being no direct correlation between steps and distance, I never said there was; what I stated was there was a direct correlation between steps and speed, the faster you go, the fewer steps per mile.  

[t.parker]

@shipo may bad, you are right. The exact number should be 14614. I wrote my daily total, not steps from the run only and it's 16km to be exact (it's not exactly 10 miles, I work with km here 😁), pace 5:00/km, steps 14614 (edit: I put 14619 before, don't know what's happening with me today), cadence 185 (the half run was 184 but with this pace, it just didn't feel right, then I increased it to 186, Stryd shows an average of 185 which matches steps quite closely). The highest cadence I can run comfortably is 190, everything over that turns into a sprint for me.