I’m on holidays in Madrid. And today, in the way one does in large European cities, I walked a lot. Really a lot. Like 21,855 steps. The only day I’ve achieved a higher step count from walking alone was last year at this time in Edinburgh. Those were also very hilly steps. But today’s steps were also warm. It was so warm in Madrid that they’ve cancelled the afternoon bike tours of the city that we’d planned on doing. So I am tired. My feet hurt. I’m drinking lots of water and feeling a sense of achievement.
I am looking forward to logging my daily steps. You see I’m doing this workplace health and fitness step counting challenge. I blogged about it here and Tracy wrote about decision to try it again after hating it last year here.
I’m on a team that is composed of multi sport athletes. We’re not just walking and counting steps. We’re also swimming, running, and biking. Me, I’m mostly just biking. (My biggest step count day was the day I rode over a 100 km.) It’s a team of over achievers. Given that a few of us are training for Ironman distance events our numbers are high. My very big day in Madrid is still below the team daily average step count of 23,500.
It’s funny being the weak link. But in a bunch of ways it suits me. What do I mean exactly by being the weak link?
I’m not doing that badly. My average daily step count is about 15,000 (that includes a conversion they do for cycling.) My biggest day yet was over 40,000. Not too shabby right?
There was one challenge day we were supposed to mark as a team by picking a day and aiming for 150,000 total steps on that day. We didn’t need to pick a day. This team does that everyday.
So do I feel guilty dragging down the team average? No. I feel motivated. I probably wouldn’t feel motivated if I were the high achieving member of a team. I might even get annoyed at people on my team who weren’t trying.
I like riding people who are faster than me, lifting with people who are stronger than me, and so on. So in this I’m motivated by step counting with the big dogs.
How about you? Are you motivated by riding with people who are faster, having workout buddies who are fitter? Or does that just depress and demoralize you? I know it works different ways for different people? What’s your way?
