I [F/26] successfully walked 100,000 steps in ONE day!

shawn_maune

New member
(POST UPDATE) A lot of people have been asking about the route I took, here it is. This is a very approximate version of it. You'll notice that it only account for 29.4 km of my walk, so where's the other 47.24 km? In this map, I do not account for ~5.3 km (beginning of the walk that was from my house to the beach). I also had to walk home 8 hours into the challenge because my watch was on the verge of dying, so the hour+ walk home accounted for another 10 km. Then, it took me another 10 km to get back downtown, where I did a few more km's and then headed back home (~8-10 km) to finish as I was exhausted. I then finished the last 9-10 km in my neighbourhood, which again, for privacy reasons, I don't want to post here.

Okay, to put this quite simply, I was scrolling through reddit the other day (May 25th) and came across this post. I was amazed by what this individual (edit!) did and wanted to see if there was anyone else who completed it and documented their journey. Honestly, to not much surprise, I noticed that majority of the people attempting or completing the challenge were male. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but I thought it might be fun for myself [F/26], to give it a try and see if I could actually do it.

PROOF

Because the decision to do this was so spontaneous, there wasn’t much planning that went into this. I was fully aware that this could backfire, but I decided to take my chances. A little bit of background on me, which I think may have contributed to my success with this challenge:

I’m a former NCAA D1 athlete. I work out 5 days a week and get in 3 cardio sessions a week, additional to walking a minimum of 5 km pretty much every single day. So, I wasn’t going into this completely unprepared, if that makes sense.

So, the little I did to prepare was basically head over to a drug store to pick up protein bars and moleskin (in case of blisters). Everything else I brought with me, I already owned. This included: a hat, sunscreen, an extra pair of socks, my wallet, my camera to document the experience, and other small things. I’m sure there was much more I should have done to prepare, but like I said, it was a completely spontaneous idea and I just had my mind set on getting it done.

MY EXPERIENCE:
  1. The first 10K – 20K steps were a breeze. I felt nothing. I literally felt like I was just going for a stroll around my neighbourhood.
  2. When I hit 30K steps, this was the first time I started to feel some soreness in my heels and at the back of knees. This was a bad sign to me, considering I still had another 70K steps to go. However, on the bright side, no blisters and that was my main concern!
  3. I started my walk off using this sort of giant fanny pack thing to carry all my small items and just kept my camera around my neck. I was slightly concerned that this was going to be a burden for me, but it didn’t actually bother me until around 55K steps (this is the point where vlogging was the last thing on my mind).
  4. There was a heat warning the day I decided to complete this challenge. It was 31 degrees Celsius in Toronto, so that wasn’t pleasant. Despite the sunscreen, I got burnt pretty badly and felt sick on multiple occasions during my walk. So, there was a lot of regret there, but I had already gone so far and I didn’t want to have to attempt the challenge over again.
  5. Using the bathroom was never an issue. Brought toilet paper along with me just in case and only had to use it once when a port-o-potty was closed in a park.
  6. During the walk, a good friend of mind met up and checked in from time to time to make sure I was alive and well. I didn’t bring any headphones with me, as I didn’t feel it was necessary. Never even used my phone once to text or talk – literally just enjoyed the walk for what it was and mentally got through the pain when it was necessary.
  7. The worst part of this walk was the last 45 minutes. Because I took so many breaks earlier in the day (I spent way too long at the beach watching the sunrise), I paid the price at the end. I spent the last 45 minutes running through pain in my feet and legs just to be able to hit 100K steps before my clock reset at 12am. That was probably one of the worst things I’ve ever had to do, but it taught me a lot about what I can handle both physically and mentally.
  8. I did not plan out a route… I do regret not doing this. I figured I knew the city well enough, and for the most part, I do. But, I just wish there was more structure and planning to this. Would have made my life much easier.
THE NEXT DAY:

On regular days, I normally wake up between 6:30 and 7:30am. After the walk, I got up at 8:56am (I consider this sleeping in) – when I woke up, I felt very refreshed. Don’t get me wrong, legs were sore, feet and knees were aching… but I felt good. I actually went for a walk late afternoon, so I surprisingly still like walking after all of that.

Would I recommend it?

Yes and no. Yes, because I think it is a pretty cool way to challenge yourself both mentally and physically. But, also no, because there are many other ways to challenge yourself mentally and physically lol.

However, at the end of the day, as a female, I get to say that I was able to walk 100K steps in 1 day – so I think it’s an accomplishment of its own for me! There really was no better time to try this challenge with all the free time I have now because of the pandemic. But as of right now (2 days later), I am perfectly fine and I'm currently looking for my next challenge. So, if you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them!
 
@shawn_maune I've walked 27 miles in a day before and that was a looong day. I can imagine how mentally tough it would be to do almost twice that! Huge kudos. I love that you just decided to do this, just to prove that you could.
 
@shawn_maune I'm tempted to do a 100k barefoot steps in a day challenge. Not sure what balance of running vs walking would be easiest.

What step counter did you use? I only have my phone and all the step counter apps I've tried kept crashing and deleting my data. I can get an estimate measuring average cadence in strava and multiplying by minutes spent moving, but it would nice to watch the steps rack up.
 
@josho Wow, doing it barefoot would be insane! Where would you do this?

I used my Garmin 45S and I found it to be very reliable. You have the option of either starting an activity, such as "walking", or just let it do its thing all day and it will continue to track your steps (doing it the 2nd way is guaranteed to make it last all day + more).
 
@shawn_maune If probably walk out along the road into the peak district. At least there I can pee in privacy by taking a little used path! And then walk back into town at the end of the day. I've done wandering off from home before and gotten up to marathon distance, but I'm not sure how many steps that accounts for. There are some quite pretty places I could visit if I went a bit further. I'd probably run into battery life issues though, my phone is pretty old.
 
@shawn_maune Wow incredible! I once walked from work (Eaton Centre) to home in Etobicoke (~13 km) and it took me 2.5 hours and I was pretty dead by the end of it. Maybe I’ll try it again, I got to listen to some podcasts and overall it was pretty relaxing!
 
@shawn_maune Not sure if OP or anyone else has mentioned her already, but check out the youtuber Keltie O'connor. Shes Toronto based (I believe) and does tons of fitness/athletic and food content. She walks a TON and is just so positive and has such a healthy outlook on life
 
@shawn_maune Awesome, you crushed it! I did 102k steps (which came to 53mi for me) last August in Oregon as a challenge during my thru hike of the Pacific Crest Trail. It took from 1am-9:30pm with minimal breaks. At that point I was conditioned from 4 months of hiking and used to walking 25+ miles every day, but holy shit, 50 was a whole other animal. I could barely walk the next morning.

I'm so impressed that you managed to do this in your local neighborhood...I had a the promise of a hot pancake breakfast in town the next morning motivating me (after a week in the woods), but I can't imagine pushing through knowing I was near my house the whole time. That takes a lot of mental strength on top of the physical conditioning.
 
@honey111 Wow, that's amazing!!

It took a lot out of me to complete this challenge, and home was close, yet far from Downtown Toronto.. so I think that was actually worse than knowing home was just around the corner lol
 
@shawn_maune Congrats! I’m in Toronto too and always on the lookout for good places to get my walk on. Where were some of the places to went to / would recommend for a gal with a few hours to kill while listening to a good audio book?
 
@shawn_maune TREMENDOUS congrats and thank you for sharing!!!! Personal best 57k and average 200k per week. Trying to build up to a 100k day myself to anoint myself into my self proclaimed Centurion club. The challenge isn’t as physical as temporal, for me. I need to block off an entire day from sunrise to sundown to accomplish and somehow this is proving to be more onerous than the actual task at hand. Go figure, but also likely a parable of life at large. Lest you think I’m Socrates....I’m also a female, have 13 years on you.....and also former D1 competitive athlete. The mentality and spirit never dies. 🙏🏼 As Bikram says, how you do anything is how you do everything. Amazing job, sis! Thank you for inspiring me.
 
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