Stepping up the pace

As regular readers will know, I'm obsessive about logging my exercise and other health metrics (much more about this in coming weeks). But today I want to focus on walking. Since 1 January 2014, I have been keeping a daily record of how many paces I walked each day. It's going well in that I've been consistently cranking out over the 10,000 paces recommended by the World Health Organisation, the UK's National Health Service and the Surgeon-General of the USA. Just checked the spreadsheet - from 1 January 2014 to 18 September 2017, my daily average has been 10,440 paces.

That's the quantity - but what about the quality of those paces? A pedometer (or indeed pedometer app in the smartphone that's replaced my pedometer) shows you accurately how many paces you have walked, but they can be lazy, large, intensive, fragmented...

I've registered a while back with Public Health England's One You programme, which nudges you towards better health. A regular online questionnaire checks how you are, quizzing you on a number of basic metrics. While I get my walking in, I don't seem to be doing enough intensive exercise. One You offered me an app called Active10, which checks how briskly I'm walking, and prompts me to walk faster more often for longer spells.

The word 'brisk' is not well-known among many Polish speakers of English - it means żwawy, dziarski, pełen animuszu, according to my Stanislawski. The app uses a mix of the gyroscope in your smartphone and GPS satellite technology to determine how quickly you're covering ground. It measures minutes rather than paces; the display show me, for example, that I've walked for 17 minutes, 14 of which have been 'brisk'.

My goal is to achieve up to three 'Active 10s', which are uninterrupted ten-minute bursts of brisk walking. This is harder that it at first seems. Not only does this mean no dawdling ['to dawdle' = mitrężyc], not dropping the pace for even a short while, it means I can't stop to take a photo, admire a view, say hello to a neighbour etc. If I do eight minutes and slow down or stop, and then return to brisk walking, it doesn't count as an Active 10. So I have to start again. Now, walking 10,000 paces usually takes around 90 minutes, so fitting in three Active 10s is achievable, but you have to think about it.

If I have an issue with OneYou, the entire programme, is that it's targeted to a wide demographic of all ages and education levels, so it's not very complex. The questions are meant to be easy-to-answer. But one that gets me whenever I fill in the questionnaire concerns alcohol. I'm asked how many beers, wines and measures of spirits I drink on a Monday, on a Tuesday, and so on. As if people think "It's Thursday! I'm going out to have 568 millilitres of premium larger, a single shot of gin, and a medium-sized glass of fortified wine - as I do EVERY Thursday." This of course is nonsense. I keep a log of my alcohol consumption (and have done so every day since 1 January 2014), unit by unit. I note the strength of all the drinks I consume, multiplying it by volume to work out the units. So half a litre of 6% beer is three units. A setka (100ml) of 40% vodka is four units. This year, my average weekly intake is 17.1 units, above the NHS's new guidelines of 14 units, but well below the old guidelines of 21 units (for men). Not to mention the older guidelines of 28 units a week. I consider 17.1 units, with most weeks including at least two consecutive days without any alcohol, to be eminently reasonable. But the NHS keeps nudging me to lower this - which I shall indeed aim for.

The exercise questions are better, because they nudge you towards regular, twice-daily exercise that gets the heart beating faster. I'm good on this in the mornings, with weights exercises and press-ups, but OneYou makes me aware that this is not enough. I need to do exercises in the evenings too.

I like the overall approach of OneYou, of which Active10 is a part. The 'gamification' of health, being nudged towards a healthier lifestyle, works. I found myself drawn into the targets and rewards that are at the heart of Active10. I'd be interested how it looks for the NHS in terms of the cost of implementing it, and the benefits it brings across society in terms of a healthier population. How many people are registered with the programme, and how many actively use it to improve their long-term health?

Back to brisk walking. I have a 15-minute walk from home to station, then another one from station to office. If I walk briskly, I can cut that down to 12 minutes at either end, I can theoretically do four Active 10s in the course of a normal working day. Three is all that's needed.

  Left: screenshot from the Active10 app. This is a sample walk. Unlike the Huawei Health app, this one needs to be activated, it doesn't come on by default - a mistake. Two days in a row I walked over 16,000 paces but neglected to switch on Active10, consequently that activity was never logged. Note the blue bar punctuated by orange bars. That's then I was forced to slow down for crossing the street etc; to hit an Active10 you need to be somewhere without obstacles that force you to break your brisk pace.

If you still drive to work, leave the car, figure out a route to the office that gives you the chance to get your paces in, and to do them briskly.

This time last year:
Evolution of human consciousness

This time two years ago:
Farewell to Ciocia Jadzia

This time three years ago:
By train from to Konstancin and Siekierki

This time four years ago:
Summer's end, Jeziorki

This time six years ago:
Ząbowska, Praga's newly-hip thoroughfare

This time nine years ago:
Catching the klimat

This time ten years ago:
Road to Łuków - a road trip into the sublime