Since the 1st of July I’ve been walking 10,000 steps a day. Originally it was to see if I could keep it up for 30 days. Then I had a fundraiser for August to raise money for Breast Cancer by walking 10,000 steps a day – so I kept going. Once that was done, I just kept moving.
I found that going for walks was something I really enjoyed. I was getting 5-10min breaks from the computer every few hours at work, and fresh air at lunch. It was a nice habit to get into.
Things get crazy
As you know from my incessant complaining on here, I’ve been working some pretty crazy hours lately.
On Sunday I worked until 1.30am Monday morning, slept for 5 hours, got up and got to work. I came home, and worked again until midnight. Another 5 hours of sleep, and back to work. I delivered my project that day, so now my work hours are back to normal thankfully.
But I’m pretty tired.
Breaking the streak
Last night, by habit I went to check how many steps I’d done before I went to bed.
I was surprised to see I had only done 8,800. It made sense, as I had been in a training session for the entire day. I had really only managed to pop downstairs briefly at lunch and that was it. The rest was a bit of running around after Luca and going out for dinner with my hubby and son that night to celebrate my work project being finished.
Suddenly, I felt sick.
I realised that if I had only done that many steps that day, there was a good chance that I had gotten less than 10,000 steps the day before too. And since the day was already over there was nothing I could do about it.
8524 steps.
Less than 10,000.
I had broken my streak.
I was so pissed off.
Restarting
I grumbled and moaned, then in a grumpy rebellion (rebelling against who I don’t know, myself?) I decided I wasn’t doing 10,000 steps and would go straight to bed. Stick it to the man and all that.
Once I’d had time to dwell on the fact I’d broken my streak, I realised that since I was restarting the habits challenge the next day that I may as well restart my 10,000 steps again. And like my habits, I planned on getting a new personal best.
So, day 1 is done and dusted. As I write this I’ve got 12,490 steps. Tick!
1 day down 109 to go to break even. 110 to beat it.
Onto day 2.
I have had a one mile a day run streak for 740 days, and the thought of breaking that (even to let my ankle/foot/whatever’s bothering me heal) has me in a panic. I can understand your dilemma. Every once in a while I think, did I run today? Did I run yesterday? Thankfully I haven’t missed, but there’s that fear.
If I do break it, intentionally or otherwise, I do not see myself starting over. At times I hate it, really, really hate it, but won’t break it intentionally. So if it was unintentional, I would probably breathe a sigh of relief and go back to 4-5 days a week of running.
740 days is amazing! I’m in awe of your perseverance, you’ve done so well. Hopefully your injury heals soon, I’ve been keeping track of your struggles with it! All the best x