15 lessons at 1,000 miles of walking

Earlier this year I reached 500 miles of cumulative walking by hitting my daily goal of “closing all 3 rings” on my Apple Watch. I shared the initial experience in a previous Medium post.

Regular measurement and forecasting helped keep me on track.

Not wanting to break my “daily move streak”, I challenged myself to see if I could get to 1,000 miles. After all, the first 500 weren’t THAT difficult.

The second 500 miles were definitely more difficult.

It’s motivating to keep a streak going.

Here are 15 things I learned on the second batch of walking 500 cumulative miles (around 9.2 miles every day for a little over 100 days):

1. The novelty of an “every day” kind of habit definitely wears off. Because I schedule my walk time to have the least impact on family or work, I’m typically walking by 6:30am, which grows more difficult as the days get shorter. Some mornings I was just not motivated but the “can’t quit the streak now” mindset pushed me groggily into the shower and out the door.
2. The longer you go, the more weather factors into your thinking. I’m going to need to come up with a plan for when the weather gets cold or wet. I’m a Californian, we don’t do well if temperatures are outside of a comfortable range of around 15 degrees. I’m likely going to need to join a gym or buy a treadmill if I want to keep this up.
3. I’m no statistician but thinking I’m probably due for a bird dropping hitting me on the head any day now. I definitely notice when birds fly directly above me (usually around Fisherman’s Wharf). A goose strike in Marin seems possible, they fly lower and resemble B-1 bombers carrying a larger payload.
4. Mock all you want, but I had a persistent fear that my cat would knock the Apple Watch off the magnetic inductive charger during the night so that the watch wouldn’t charge. This would subsequently make the Watch unusable the next day, hindering its ability to record steps, breaking my personal record for continuous days of hitting my goal. Didn’t happen.
5. Friends who read my first post started noticing me all around town and I’d get car honks and waves. It’s nice to be greeted even in the early morning hours and people seemed to enjoy spotting me with a “there he is, he really does walk a lot” acknowledgment.
6. I noticed my average walking distance per day slipping slightly as the weeks went by. Only once I saw the end goal in sight (1,000 miles), did my average increase (see September in chart below)
7. Routine is soothing. Waving to the same store owner, watching the same Boudin baker make the special turtle or alligator loaves out of fresh dough (the smell of that bakery at 7am is intoxicating), seeing the same patterns was comforting and provided a feeling of structure.
8. Over 100 consecutive days despite seeing plenty of cats and dogs I only saw one coyote and one rat.
9. It is extremely difficult to walk by a donut shop at certain hours if there is a strong smell of coffee. I would routinely peruse the Krispy Kreme counter and then politely request that the cashier look me in the face and say “you don’t need it” — they almost always laughed, complied, and it worked surprisingly well.
10. I completed the second 500 miles three days faster, taking 53 days instead of the initial 56 days, or around 5% more per day.
11. Turns out you don’t need a smart watch to track your distance. Get on a treadmill and get your average walking speed (probably 2.5 to 3 miles per hour) — next time you walk, track your start and end time and multiply total time walked by the treadmill number. It’s a surprisingly accurate indicator of distance.
12. Getting up early is a fantastic habit. The world around you is often sleeping, commute traffic is quieter, the coffee is fresh, the baked goods are still warm, and having time to just think about the day ahead is meditative and calming.
13. Carrying a banana and enjoying it at the half-way mark was an easy reward/mini-goal which also helped with morning nourishment.
14. Most memorable moment during this 500 mile segment? A very close call I had on a cross-country flight. Flights are tough because one of the Apple Watch goals is standing for at least a few minutes for 12 hours each day. If you’re on a plane for that many hours, it’s not easy (I did a 10 hour visit to Boston for a surprise party, so I was seated on a plane for a large percentage of a 24 hour period). I was at 97% of my walking goal while on the flight back to San Francisco. That may not seem like a big deal, but it was 10pm EST on the plane with a few hours remaining on the flight, and I couldn’t risk trying to getting the Apple Watch to think it was actually West Coast time as I was on airplane mode. Once it hits midnight, the steps count for the next day. If I didn’t do something, I’d certainly miss the goal. So I got up and paced up and down the aisle of the plane. And walked in place in the lavatory. 3% of a 570 calorie burn is actually way more steps than you probably realize. I wasn’t going to let a time zone technicality ruin a record of months of consistent performance. It was certainly not easy and must have looked ridiculous to my fellow passengers.
15. The quote attributed to Peter Drucker “you can’t manage what you can’t measure” seems appropriate. I don’t think I could have stuck with this discipline without some sort of regular feedback.

1,000 miles is approximately walking from San Francisco to Denver

I feel no pressure to continue, nor to stop. I don’t plan to report my next milestone. Walking is a very quiet and a rare opportunity for solitude in a metropolitan area. I’d imagine weather or illness will eventually knock me off my personal record for consecutive days, but it doesn’t matter. To think I’ve walked the equivalent of San Francisco to Denver makes the country seem more accessible. For now, I’m just going to try to get my walking in tomorrow.