Pedometers

I’ve never mentioned it, but my sister gave me a pedometer for Christmas, and it has been a fun toy. I discovered that I travel about 47 inches per step when jogging and about 28 inches per step when walking. I also learned that I walk/jog/sprint about 4 miles when I play Ultimate Frisbee at lunch time, and that if I walk to work, I take about 2664 steps from my front door to my desk. That’s about 1.18 miles if you are following along and doing the math. Cool stuff to know (and I didn’t have to carry around an expensive battery-devouring GPS to find it all out).

This week my 6 year-old got a pedometer from a box of cereal. He loves wearing it around. He puts it on and starts running around the house and then checking how many steps he’s taken. It’s amazing how quickly he can get up into the hundreds just bouncing from couch to couch. I wonder how accurate his free pedometer is, but if the idea was to get kids to exercise more, it’s working for him. Not that he had much trouble with that before.

This evening we hiked the Camas Lily Loop at Lacamas Park as a family. The Lilies were in bloom and the fields of purple were beautiful (forgot the camera, sorry). My wife and I carried the baby and the three year-old, respectively, in our mei tais. That’s the longest I’ve worn one with a heavier kiddo and it was surprisingly comfortable. Our 6 year-old walked the whole way without too much complaining.

When we got home we compared pedometers. Mine said 7338 steps, and his 7863. That’s about 3 and a quarter miles going by my stride length. Not a bad hike! One of our step counts must be off though, otherwise his stride length is only two inches shorter than mine. Carrying a 40 pound load probably affected my stride, but I don’t know if it shortened it that much. Hmm, maybe we should have brought that GPS along.

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