Pride goeth before the fall

Turns out that blindly following my new health regimen might be bad for my health

You no doubt remember my post two weeks ago where I talked about my new addiction: walking at least 10,000 steps a day. Well, two days later, I was floored by a cold (hey, this was a “man-cold,” scientifically proven to be more debilitating than childbirth), so I was thrilled to find that my step app (Pedometer++) has a loophole where you can take a “rest day” that won’t break your running total. Or walking total, I should say.

You can only use the loophole if you’ve met the target for the six previous days, tho. So you have to be sure you won’t be “resting” again in the following week, or it resets to zero-days-in-a-row. So, man-cold be damned, I was back out the next day, sniffling my way around Toulouse despite a deep desire to crawl back into bed.

That’s when I started to realize that my 10,000-step aspirations had become a bit of an obsession. It had been easy to do when I was visiting new cities, or walking around the centre of Toulouse, which has so many attractions and scenic walks that I was always discovering something new. But I have recently relocated to an airbnb which is in a really nice home but is in an area that is basically suburb, a 45-minute walk from the city centre along a variety of decidedly mundane routes. Doing my steps here has had me walking around an unlit park in the dark, or walking back and forth from the airbnb to the épicerie de nuit (1,000 steps, aller-retour) to make my daily quota before the clock re-sets at midnight.

In other words, up until now I have always felt that my steps had purpose beyond the simple measure. In the new location, the journey has no destination. That’s why I was pleased to have an actual rendezvous on Thursday night: an InterNations ex-pat mixer at a bar in historic Toulouse. My map app told me it would take about 45 minutes to walk it in each direction. Perfect, that would be just about right to collect the required steps, as long as I headed back by 11 or so to beat the clock.

The mixer, as usual, was fun. You meet people from all over the planet and get to hear their perspectives on Toulouse, their home countries, their recommendations of “must” cities to see (or avoid), etc. They are all there for much the same reason as you, reaching out to do a little socializing in a city where they likely don’t have many contacts. The “small talk” is rather large in a lot of cases, I’ve had some engaging discussions about everything from AI to space travel. (Half the jobs here seem to be with Airbus, or are at least Airbus-adjacent.) That night I talked with people from Lebanon, Turkey, Spain, France, Germany, Taiwan, Holland and elsewhere, and I think I represented Canada well despite my quanglo accent. (Quebec anglo. I know it’s not a thing. Not yet. But I’ve got more than one Toulousain thinking that ma job is not the only word where québécois use different genders than the French.)

The time passed quickly, and people starting making their excuses at about 10:30. After Carmen from Spain had begged off by explaining that she had to be at work at 5 am, I was apologizing that I needed to get in another 5,000 steps by midnight or …

Or what? Would I turn into a citrouille, a mouse, a lizard, would my Eiffel Tower tuque turn into a Nordiques cap? Nope. I wouldn’t even lose my walking streak—which at that point had reached 29 days—because I could just claim another rest day. By now, at the mixer, the stragglers were waiting for the dance floor to open up and the DJ to start spinning. Dancing is exercise, right? So why was I leaving again?

Because my app was taunting me. It had stopped being a tool; its metrics had become my master. Don’t get me wrong, I like walking, but it seems my brain was no longer in charge of my feet, Pedometer++ was. So I said my goodbyes and started walking back along cold and mostly deserted streets of the banlieue, occasionally checking my phone to see if I’d make the step target by midnight. About four blocks from my destination, I pulled out my phone once more to see if I might need to circle the block a time or two before retiring.

The street wasn’t particularly well lit and Toulouse isn’t exactly known for the flatness of its sidewalks. And I was doing that thing we all do these days, looking at my phone rather than where I was going.

The next thing I knew, I had face-planted on the gravel path, my phone flying into a hedge. I was lucky to get my hands out in time to prevent serious injury, but after I picked myself up, I could feel the blood dripping from my brow, which had briefly brushed the ground.

Not the smoothest sidewalks in the world.

Shit, I said. Shit, shit, shit. If I go straight to the airbnb to clean up, I might have time to finish the 10,000 steps.

I know how stupid I sounded even as I said it. (Not out loud, I’m not that crazy). But I went to check my phone anyway. That’s when I realized it was in the bushes somewhere. I found it after a panicky minute or so, and was relieved to see I still had time to get back to the b&b, clean up, bandage my brow and get back out to finish my 10,000 steps.

I had walked about 15 metres farther before I absent-mindedly reached for my door keys. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. It seems my keys had been pitched when I ditched. But I was no longer near the spot where I spun out. I’d lost my frame of reference. The dark hedge and gravel path all looked the same and my keys would be much harder to spot in the dark than my iPhone.

I imagined myself knocking on the door of my airbnb near midnight, waking the host out of a sound sleep, blood dripping down my face, to explain that I needed to clean up quickly as I still had about 500 steps to do.

Or worse, he wasn’t home and I’d be homeless until I found the keys.

Fortunately, I’m not a complete idiot. If you remember my story from September about the airline misplacing my luggage at the Toulouse airport, you’ll know that I have been using Apple AirTags on my key possessions. Literally, this time. I had put one on my airbnb keys, au cas où. And this was definitely a cas: the second time one of my AirTags had rescued me, because I was able to “ring” my keys from my phone’s FindMy app. I’d have never have found them otherwise, because I was at least five metres off target in the dark and they were actually in the hedge.

No, it’s nor Darth Sidious, just me after knocking my noggin.

What did I do next? Well, I went to my lodgings and cleaned up the cut, of course.

Then went back out and finished the steps, with two minutes to spare.

Perseverance or pig-headedness? I’ll let you decide.

⚜ ⚜ ⚜

Not sponsored by Apple, but boy am I a fan. AirTags saved my butt this week.

It’s 23h36 on Friday as I write this, and I have clocked 8,450 steps today. I hear the voices in the wind, just a few hundred steps to go, but I am ignoring them this time.

I’ve got a new slogan for my travels:

It’s not the distance but the journey. And it’s better to watch your steps than count them.

Thanks for walking with me today. See you in a few.