May is National Walking Month, but my step count has become an embarrassment to bipeds - Gaby Soutar

Today’s was 309. On discovering that May is National Walking Month, I checked my pedometer score.Then I switched the mobile off and on again, and demanded a recount.

Before I began working from home and especially during lockdown, I would often hit 10,000 steps. That’s touted as the ideal fitness target, though 6,000 is considered pretty decent.

To get to the greater number, my routine would involve a combination of a pre-work morning yomp, a postprandial perambulation and an evening tramp. As I’m lucky enough to live near one of the Capital’s finest green spaces, I’d go to inspect my manor, count the trees and check that the neighbourhood dogs were all present, correct and behaving.

Especially the local spaniel, even if she does look innocent.

Pic: Jacek Chabraszewski - stock.adob

I’d get into a rhythm and my stumps would be regularly tick-tocking like a metronome. Sometimes I’d have my headphones on, with my heels striking the ground to the staccato beat.

As I smugly accrued steps, with roughly 2,235 making up a mile, it felt like money that was going directly to the health and longevity bank.

It was excellent work, if I do say so myself, to tot up so many. If The Proclaimers had called their most famous song I’m Gonna Be (1,117,500 Steps), then we would’ve been REALLY impressed, though the chorus might’ve sounded a bit clunky.

For a while, it felt as if it was supporting my mental wellbeing as well as physical fitness.

I’d speed along and my thoughts would be sieved, so the important stuff could rise to the top, and I’d forget the detritus. This sort of movement also seemed to leave a vapour trail of anxiety-inducing fight or flight hormones. I’d shed those chemicals and any antsy feelings would have dispersed by the time I got home.

Sometimes, because I’m not so talented at sitting still and cross-legged, I’d try a walking meditation. This involves being conscious of the sensation of your feet on the ground, your breathing and the sound of birds, or even car alarms, if that’s all there is. It works.

As far as routes go, in common with many Edinburgers, I prefer to take the twisting and turning paths which involve vennels and undulating streets. I’m not a fan of a death march along long and straight thoroughfares, like Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street. They feel exposed.

But that was then.

I’ve now become an embarrassment to bipeds everywhere.

Only a few years have passed, but my walking is in stark contrast to the time we took a mini break to Rome, and did a sweaty 24,000 steps in one day.

We went round and round the Colosseum, then to the Trevi Fountain and took a tour of the Vatican Museum, all powered by one tiny scoop of pistachio gelato.

When we got back to the hotel, my husband’s foot was bleeding into his cream Converse. Molto alla moda. They still boast the stain.

Perhaps my tramping mojo hasn’t come back because the chill in the air just won’t quit, or there may be no excuse for my lack of enthusiasm.

I’ve stopped enjoying the act of walking simply for its own sake.

I’ll attempt to do the bare minimum, but I need a destination and preferably a selection of baked goods as an incentive. Although, now that it’s Spring, I am willing to travel shorter distances, say 500 steps, to swoon over a particularly bonnie magnolia or cherry blossom.

I was surprised to discover that a sedentary lifestyle is classified as 5,000 steps or fewer a day. That seems quite a lot to me, though I have never considered myself a couch potato. That’s at least the equivalent of four trips to the corner shop and a diversion to the post-box.

My daily total average now clocks in at about 3,000.

Sometimes I wish I was a mermaid, so I didn’t have to think about the step-count drudgery. I’d just comb my hair with my lovely shell comb and toss the mobile into the sea, before they had time to invent an app that counts flipper-flaps.

My steps have not only depleted, they have also gone a bit wrong in the speed department. I’ve transformed from gazelle to elderly goat.

I used to try to catch up with other walkers ahead of me, as if I was playing a real life game of Mario Kart. I was Toad, they were Yoshi. I loved the final acceleration, when you’re neck and neck for an embarrassingly long time, trying not to glance at each other, before the other person gives up in the face of your dogged determination and you can stage the takeover. Boom. Grand Prix Cup. Usually, I’d leave my fellow hikers in the dust.

Now, I struggle to keep up with most people.

That’s not inconsequential. I read something recently that said that walking pace really matters.

If you’re just dawdling, those are not quality steps. For health benefits, they said that you have to walk as if you’re being pursued by the Grim Reaper. Unless you’re a committed Goth, that can take the fun out of a stroll, but at least it gets those glutes and quadriceps burning.

As a child of the Seventies, my reference is being chased by Benny Hill. That really gets you moving. Running, sometimes. Actually, I think I prefer old Grimmy and his scythe.

Anything to encourage my walking regimen.

We’re up to 600 now. It’s a start.