Are you sitting down right now? The question that’s often posed before bad news is delivered; in this case, however, it’s the sitting down itself that’s the bad news. At DU it feels like students go on foot everywhere: to Sturm, to Jerusalem’s, to the Ritchie Center, to parties. Yet the average student only takes about half the 10,000 steps (five miles) experts recommend to maintain our health.
How hard is it really for a Pioneer to meet this daily health requirement? I decided to find out. Using the app Steps on my iPhone to track my progress, I set out to accomplish this feat on an otherwise uneventful Wednesday.
I began by walking to my 10 a.m. class on the second floor of Sturm—not quite the challenge that the fourth floor presents, so I took the long way from my house on Josephine St. via University instead of cutting through campus. When I finally reached my classroom I was five minutes late, but already 1,679 steps closer to accomplishing my mission. During our five-minute break, I got out of my seat and walked around rather than indulging in my usual Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook routine.
My second and last class of the day began at noon on the same floor, which didn’t allot me much progress, so before I knew it, it was already 2 p.m. and I was still only about a fifth of the way towards my 10,000 steps. Since I hadn’t yet had my critical dose of caffeine for the day, I decided to walk to Kaladi before heading home. Large Americano in hand, I’d reached just over 3,300 steps by the time I made it through my door, triggering a discouraging revelation: I’d have to go to the gym.
Walking, of course, it took me about fifteen minutes to reach the Ritchie Center and though I felt that should have been a sufficient workout, my phone’s pedometer said otherwise and I made my way over to an elliptical. Thanks in large part to my music playlist, equal parts Beyonce, G-Eazy and ever-so-shamefully Justin Bieber, I did 30 minutes on the elliptical and what I considered a triumphant ten on a stair-climber.
When I’d finished exercising, I ignored the very tempting inclination to just Uber home and managed to drag myself back to see I’d made it to 7,864 steps. About dinner-time and with 2,000 steps still to go, I resolved to walk to Anderson Commons to do homework a little later. Turns out, it had gotten pretty frigid in the absence of sun and this was not conducive to my plan, so I instead ended up walking around the island of my kitchen until I’d completed my last steps of the day; a fairly boring endeavor that took me a little over a half hour.
As I got in bed, the final number displayed was a celebratory 10,157. The final verdict, you ask? Are you sitting down? Five miles a day is doable for all of us at DU, but only if you can overcome all your lazy, college-student tendencies. Cut back on Uber wherever possible, never choose the elevator over stairs (even if your 8 a.m. is on the fourth floor of Sturm), take the long way to class and if you really must have an Illegal Pete’s burrito, walk there after a trip to the gym.
