The Lack of Walking Blues

[Simon65]

After completing 223 consecutive days of doing over 10K a day and averaging 14.5K during that period, I've had to cut down on my steps.  During that period I set my personal best of 30.7K in a day.

It's kind of hard walking outside in the snow and the ice, and walking around the house 3 or 4 hundred times wears on my family's nerves.  I also think walking around the house has caused me to get sore achilles tendons.

So yesterday was my first below 10K day, felt so bluesy.  I do have an exercise bike which I decided to ride for 30 minutes during the weekdays, and twice during both Saturday and Sunday.

I'm still going to try and do 5K of steps each day.

I know my fitbit isn't going to record the mileage I do on my bike and that I'll have to add that manually.

I was hoping that in 2020 I would walk over 2600 miles and be at least 5.2 million steps and I am kind of bummed that I won't be able to do that.

Does anyone think I'm still trying to overdo it with my walking or indoor bike with my sore achilles?  I really don't want to cut out all cardio as it really helps with stress and helps me sleep a little.

Thank you,

[Julia_G]

@Simon65, only you can know your body, how it feels, and what you can manage.  

I know that many of us who have been using Fitbits for a while can get a bit “addicted” to scoring those 10k steps every day, and a manual log somehow feels like a “cheat”.  But it isn’t really.  You need to balance your need for cardio to keep you going (and sleeping when it’s bedtime) with your walking injury (achilles tendon).

I would say that the winter might be a good time to let that tendon heal by using your bike more and taking it a bit easy with 5k steps instead of 10-15k.  

You might surprise yourself, after a good break and reset, with how much energy you have come the spring.  

5k steps and half an hour a day on the indoor bike sounds like a good “ticking over” program to me while you ride out the ice and snow (there’s a reason many animals hibernate, and why most of us naturally want to do lots of curling up in a warm place through the winter).

But, as I said at the beginning, no one here can tell you if you are overdoing it.  As the saying goes, listen to your body!