Now that many train stations have switched off their escalators to conserve energy it’s taking me longer to get around the city.  I can no longer dash up a moving escalator to make the train that’s about to leave the platform.  Running up the stairs isn’t practical.  Not only would it exhaust me but the other people on the stairs aren’t moving in an ordered manner.  Escalators are easier as no-one is running down one while you are running up.  There are also rules on the escalator: you stand on the left and walk on the right.  There are no rules on the stairs and I’m surprised that aren’t more head on collisions during rush hour.  Actually there are arrows painted on the stairs to indicate the routes for walking up and down but these get obscured by the hundreds of feet on the stairs.

At times I feel like I’ve walked up a lot of stairs and on Wednesday I decided to count them.  I went to the clinic and did some grocery shopping.  The 355 steps I walked up were in three train stations and on two foot bridges.  I monitor the amount of exercise I do in a week but I haven’t been counting the walking I do between train stations or to and from the grocery store.  I have a tendency to think of exercise as a planned activity like today when I walked 4 miles along the river.  Or when I spend an hour at the gym.  But now I’m curious about the amount of general walking I do.

When I go on long walks I plot the routes using Google maps and work out distances.  I also record the time it takes me to do the walks.  I don’t want to do this for general dandering around the city so I have jut bought a pedometer to count the number of steps I take in a day.  I’ve no idea how many steps I take in a day and don’t know if I’ll come close to the target of 10,000 that I have been told about, but I should know this time next week.