In this week’s blog, Abi Begho discusses her Walk to Work Week challenge.
Last week was Walk to Work Week and I got involved by walking part of my journey to and from work all last week. This was a great opportunity to get some much-needed exercise and I was amazed at just how much I was able to achieve by making some very simple changes to my journey to work.
I started off on Monday 11th May. I was heading to central London and decided to substitute the 7-minute tram journey from Addiscombe to East Croydon train station with a lovely early morning walk. This was a great way to start the morning, it took about 25 minutes, and along the way, I had the opportunity to see my neighbourhood in a whole new light; the lovely houses, the cute kids heading to nursery and the shopkeepers getting ready for a day of trading. When I got to East Croydon Station a quick glance at my pedometer completely shocked me, I had racked up 3,977 steps! Whey hey!
During the rest of the day, I made a conscious effort to walk as much as I could so I walked to meetings, took a walk at lunchtime, walked up stairs and walked part of my journey back home. At the end of the day, a final glance at my pedometer informed me I had walked 12,087 steps! I was very pleased as the recommended number of steps we should take a day is 10,000.
The rest of the week was much the same although some days were not so good. I peaked at 15,173 steps on 12th May due to a trip to Birmingham that saw me doing a lot of walking as I opted to walk between train stations and skipped the taxi journeys I would normally take and walked to and from my meeting. My low point was a terrible 3,268 steps on the last day of Walk to Work Week. On this day I was working close to home and because I was carrying my heavy laptop I jumped on the tram, but I did walk up 5 flights of stairs!
I really enjoyed my little Walk to Work Week experiment and I’ve decided to introduce more walking into my commute to work. I’ll be skipping the tram and walking to East Croydon station from now on. I’m going to force myself to do 10,000 steps a day.
