Diary: Measurements

[degringolade]

After a couple of weeks being a sluggard, I am back to moving this week but the pace of increase is slowing down noticably. The Chef commented yesterday that he shoots for 7,000 steps a day. Now, this is what I considered to be my basic when I was walking steadily, but truthfully, I am beginning to lean toward measuring in mileage (kilometers) as a measure rather than steps. Not that there is anything wrong with steps. It is all a matter of taste.

Steps makes it personal to you. An old geezer like me who has bum knees needs to take a shitload of steps to get a mile in. A younger me would have taken a lot fewer steps. But both the younger me and the older me would have covered the same distance.

So I thinking that I will need to turn in about 2.5 miles a day. That will give me the steps I need and will be a more concrete set of goals. I am actually considering making it four kilometers instead, just to be contrary. A unit of measure is a unit of measure, but metric does make more sense and it pisses people off when I talk in a foreign language.

Hell, maybe I'll switch to metric for tempeatures too!! That will really piss them off when I mention that today will maybe hit 40!

Comments

livin' la vida métrica

[chefxh]

40 is the all-time record high in BCN, from July of last year. A few days ago it was 38 and some. The Weather Underground page I follow here (L'Hospitalet de Llobregat Station) fortunately flashes Fahrenheit briefly before displaying the Celsius version.

Spain is all about the shutters and awnings and temperature control through air shafts and patios and windows, though now nearly everyplace has bombas de calor.

Ours, of course, were badly installed so the one in the living room doesn't drain well and on humid days it leaks water down the wall and we have to turn it off, but double pane windows keep it under 30 inside for the most part.

Metric in the kitchen is a breeze. I much prefer it; all you need is a scale. Otherwise I still have to do rough conversions in my head with temperatures and lengths and weights and distances.

Today I walked 7.6 kilometers with nearly 11,000 steps. I only have a 30" inseam, so I've never had a very long stride. But as my hip gets grumpier, it takes more steps to cover the same distance. Took me 1 hour 38 minutes. Adds up to 50,861 steps or 35.1 kilometers this week, which ends tonight. (Just figured out how to look it up.) None of this counts the paltry few hundred steps I take around the apartment in a day. Kevin was worried that I would glom onto this as a new compulsion and obsess over getting my 7,000, but so far I don't care that much.