Walking Update – Week 4, 2020
Today I want to share with you an update of my walking for week 4 of 2020. The week started on Monday the 20th of January and concluded on Sunday the 26th of January.
Step Data
| Day | Steps | Target |
| Monday | 21,019 | 15,000 |
| Tuesday | 20,795 | 15,000 |
| Wednesday | 20,215 | 15,000 |
| Thursday | 21,445 | 15,000 |
| Friday | 23,110 | 15,000 |
| Saturday | 21,586 | 15,000 |
| Sunday | 21,397 | 15,000 |
| Total | 149,567 | 105,000 |
Stepping Numbers
For over five years now, I have been tracking my steps daily and I enjoy looking over the numbers. This section breaks down some of those numbers from this week and cumulative for the year.
High & Low Days
The high day of the week with the most steps was Friday, with 23,110 steps.
The low day of the week with the least steps was Wednesday, with 20,215 steps.
Weekly Totals
Throughout the week, I met my daily step target on 7 out of 7 days. I walked 149,567 steps for the week with an average of 21,366 steps per day for the week.
Year to Date
With the steps I have walked this week, I now have 496,292 steps for the year. That places me around 31,684 steps ahead of the same time last year. The goal for the year is to walk 7 million steps. There is another 49 weeks to go I need 6,503,708 steps or 132,728 steps per week.
This Time Last Year
I also find it interesting to look back to last year and see a comparison for the week and year to date progress.
So let’s look at the step details from week 4 in 2019. I walked 118,241 steps, giving me an average of 16,891 steps per day. Overall, I have walked 31,864 steps more this year.
The highest day for the week saw me walk, 19721 steps a difference of 3,389 less than this year. While the lowest day for the week saw me walk, 15,128 steps a difference of 5,087 less than this year.
If you would like to see the full update from last year, you can visit post at Walking Update – Week 4, 2019.
Other Thoughts
There is a bit to unpack this week with my walking, such as my high step average and change of the goal for the year.
I will start with a look at my high average step count for the week. I started the week with the thought if I just cross 20,000 steps each day I might make the highest week total. Not taking the time to go back and double check what that total was or what it required to get there. I think it was Thursday I finally had a look and found it was just out of reach. Instead of the 23,882 per day to reach the 167,175 steps, I would need it was closer to 28,000 steps per day. So I just stuck with crossing 20,000 steps each day for the whole week.
With total steps of 149,567 for the week, it is my third best week to date. The only two weeks when I walked more steps were week 44 (167,174 steps) and week 46 (154,704 steps) in 2015. So it was a reasonably good effort for the highest walking total in over four years.
I have only ever recorded five weeks over 140,000 steps before. Four of them were all in 2015, with just one in 2018, when I only just scrapped over in week 28 recording 140,091 steps for the week. So in one respect I have achieved that, but I did not get there for the highest week.
There was one other achievement that came from walking 20,000+ steps each day for a week. That is the most consecutive days walking over 20,000 steps. Previously the most was the same week as my highest weekly total, which was week 44 in 2015 with six days in a row. The run is actually eight days as I also walked 20,000+ steps last Sunday.
Time to talk about my goal, which this week I increased from 6.5 million steps to 7 million steps. It might be hard to imagine why I made this decision. Especially considering that in the past few years I have had trouble reaching the 6.5 million steps. The closest I got was 6.4 million in 2016 and it has only gone down from there.
The primary reason that I made the change and increased my goal was to give myself a greater challenge. While I have struggled to meet this goal before that is mostly due to not focusing on my progress. I would check in on my progress at random times throughout the year but not adjust my approach.
The need for constant review and adjustment became apparent to me in the last year. With some things going on in my life, it was hard enough to focus on achieving the daily result, let alone staying focused on a year long goal. The result was my lowest yearly total since 2015 with just 6.1 million steps. If I had a process in place to stop and review my progress, I might have overcome this. Instead, I set another record for myself with the most days missing my goal of seven days since I started walking 15,000 steps per day.
The year ahead will be interesting I am sure with my slightly more ambitious goal. However, I think it will be a little easier to achieve then you might think.