Putting one foot in front of another
Just to be the man who walks a thousand miles
Apologies that I haven’t sent out a Substack piece for a couple of weeks. It’s not that I don’t have anything to say: in fact, the opposite is true. I want to write a big piece about what I think academic freedom means in the light of the Hamas terrorist attacks of 7th October, but I don’t know if I can (which kind of says something in itself). I also want to write about the UK COVID Inquiry, because I think lots of hot takes are drawing the wrong lessons, and it’s annoying watching the history of Autumn 2020 getting rewritten when I can remember exactly who said what and when.
But these are big topics that deserve time, and that’s something I’m short of at the moment. I’m enjoying my teaching, but lecturing such a big group is draining. I’ve also been writing a couple of other long work-related things - one of which should hopefully see the light of day some time soon, the other of which is for Other Purposes. So, sorry to subscribers!
Instead of these weighty matters, I want to write about something less important and more personal: the pleasure of putting one foot in front of the other. You’re probably not surprised to hear that I’m someone who is data-driven and responds well to gameification of things. So, for Christmas 2019 I got a Garmin watch, downloaded the app to my phone, and have been logging my steps and runs ever since.
At first of course, life was normal. In January 2020, I have the record of my early morning runs around Cambridge and Frankfurt on work trips, before the world changed and we all suddenly started staying at home. It looks like on Monday 30th March, I hit my low point with a grand total of 2,161 steps. But gradually, as the country opened up, the sun shone and restrictions were lifted, my daily step count began to pick up, and I deliberately started exploring new places. For Bristolians, this included getting to know routes like the Frome Valley Walkway and the Bristol and Bath Railway Path.
As we moved towards autumn, as the log plots showed that we were returning into COVID growth and little short of a lockdown seemed to be slowing it down, I took a decision. So on Thursday 29th October 2020 I took 10,000 steps, and coming up on nearly three years later I’ve done that many steps every day since.
Of course, I know the objections to this. There’s nothing special about the number 10,000, which probably originates from Japanese typography nearly 60 years ago. Being able to go for this many steps implies that I have all kinds of overlapping privilege, in terms of my health, my time, where I live and so on. There’s almost certainly something obsessive-compulsive in doing something (anything!) that many days in a row.
And yet.
Having started this as a reaction to impending lockdown, as a way perhaps to take control of a tiny thing amid the chaos of a world falling apart amid the spread of a new virus, I’m still doing it now, so I think it’s worth asking why?
Firstly, of course, I assume there is some benefit to my physical health in doing this. Fresh air and exercise seems like a decent combination, even if it means your grandma was probably right.
But I think there are mental benefits as well. When I’m having a research day of bashing my head at a problem or am stuck sending endless emails, it’s extremely liberating to get up from my desk. There’s huge benefit to having a change of scene and thinking through what I’m trying to do at a higher “strategic” level, rather than get bogged down in the “tactics” of calculation and email chains. It’s striking how often I come back from a walk with a new idea to try on a research problem, a new thing to want to write, or a new insight into something like COVID data. Somehow stepping away from my desk feels like taking control of my own thoughts, and asserting ownership of my own time.
Beyond that, there’s something beneficial about seeing the world at walking pace. While I’m no
, sending dispatches from karaoke bars in Seoul or yurts in Mongolia, I’ve come to know my own city and the surrounding area so much better over the last three years. I’ve started to see how the various parts of it fit together, and to understand how distorted a view you get and how much you miss by whizzing through at car speed, stuck behind glass. There’s always something to notice on foot, even on familiar routes: whether a new piece of street art, wildlife in an unexpected place, or simply the annual cycle of the seasons.So actually, while 10,000 steps may sound like a time-consuming chore, it’s actually been pretty easy most days (helped by my commute for example). But then, there are days when I’ve gone … further than this.
About six weeks ago, as you may know, I walked from Chepstow to Monmouth via the Forest of Dean to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support. It was hard work. Temperatures were up around 30 degrees, the 26 miles of distance came with over 3,000 feet of ascent. But somehow, everything I’ve said about the joys of walking around a city was taken to another level.
It helped of course that it’s an absolutely beautiful part of the world - just look at it! The walk was nearly entirely off-road, but on well-marked paths. There were marshals, three pit stops for food and drink, and people coming out of their houses to provide encouragement. There was even a guy scooping out handfuls of Skittles for us at the bottom of the toughest climb of the day!
But somehow, it was the parts in between those checkpoints that I will remember the most. It wasn’t a race, but it was chip timed, and so I know I was out on the trail for just under 9 hours. A lot of that time I was on my own, and my world was reduced to simply putting one foot in front of another and watching out for way markers. And as the day moved on, the landscape changed from a Welsh border town, through a disused rail tunnel, passing Tintern Abbey, up a crazy hill to St Briavels for lunch, ups and downs through the Forest of Dean, a long climb up the Burial Path, before finally heading back over the border into Wales and dropping into Monmouth.
In some sense, my world both shrank and grew. My focus reduced down to just keeping going, keeping an eye on the path, wondering when the next mile marker was due. But at the same time, by following century-old paths along ancient field boundaries at that kind of pace, it was hard not to feel like I formed a connection with this extraordinary landscape and saw something of it as the farmers and miners who lived and worked there had done. In that kind of countryside, it was hard not to think of Bilbo and Frodo heading out on foot, and the spiritual value of the kind of quest that they pursued.
But perhaps I was just dehydrated.
Of course, this has nothing to do with my daily walks, beyond the fact that without those I wouldn’t have felt the confidence to strike out on a longer one like this. But as I come up on three years of this kind of walking, it’s worth thinking what might be around the next corner if you only stick on some trainers and go and look for it.
Another great piece, look forward to works in progress!
I too have a mild data driven addiction to the output from my Garmin watch and certainly during COVID years it has enabled me to maintain fitness by providing an incentive to take outdoor exercise, in my case both walking and cycling. Before I retired, and working in Cambridge, I used to commute every day by bicycle and also walked or cycled between different University sites for lectures and meetings. As you say it is an opportunity to refocus attention away from other work related problems, but at the same time also often providing alternative thoughts on how to overcome obstacles encountered in those work problems. Also unlike when driving it's at a slow enough pace to take in the world around you.
I'm certainly interested to hear your views on the COVID enquiry and your recollections from the early days of the pandemic. Yours was one of the accounts on Twitter that I chose to follow in order to get a balance of views of the numbers and how to interpret them.