Pedometers Explained

I actually bought a packet of breakfast cereal just to get a free pedometer! I'm pretty sure that it was a simple ball bearing that rolled from one end of a tube to another and registered a 'pace' upon each movement of the leg. I doubt if it was accurate but at this stage I want a benchmark, some sort of measurement, not distance but steps, because we are now told we need to walk 10,000 steps per day. The first day with my pedometer clipped to my pocket, I clicked 3000 steps in thirty minutes. So, one thousand steps per ten minutes was my benchmark.

My walking was fast -ish, sometimes I found myself slowing down and consciously picked up the pace. I needed to increase my distance and thus stretched the path I walked, another 500 or so for the next couple of days.

I soon found myself in a rut, my mind wandered, I slowed down too frequently and my free pedometer was either sticking or becoming over-zealous. This isn't an excuse, one day I clocked 275 steps in thirty-five minutes, it should have been 3500 steps. Another day I registered 8978 and the next time I looked it was on 0016.

The free pedometer needed to go into retirement; the terrain was probably too rough, for its simple mechanism and I now needed something more accurate.

I was surprised at the varying styles and types of pedometers, not just ones that click when you move your leg but pedometers that need calibrating, nothing complicated, simply measure your normal walking stride and enter the length into the pedometer so it has an accurate reading.

They will even tell you the time of day, act as a stopwatch and because it knows the length of your stride, it calculates the distance walked. It gets better, there are pedometers with a pace-maker, imagine having a drill sergeant-major walking along side you yelling, "left - right, left - right". With these pedometers, you set the pace you want to maintain and it will either provide a bleep bleep or other noise for each step.

That might be a little annoying so some clever pedometers have an alarm that will remind you to pick up the pace when you start flagging! Even a radio or MP3 player built into your pedometer makes the new regime more enjoyable.

Remember calories in calories out? You can select a pedometer that will tell you the calories you have burned. Now we're talking, a feature rich pedometer that has FM radio with auto scan or MP3 player, real time display, stopwatch function, distance and calories burned.

So, I have treated myself to a state of the art, feature rich pedometer. It has given me the incentive to set targets and maintain the effort to keep fit. Fortunately it was very cheap and I have set my sights on a new gadget - a heart rate monitor!

Not a large piece of medical equipment on a trolley, or a pace-maker surgically implanted in my chest cavity, in fact it looks just like a watch,.. a trendy one at that.

My logic is that the free pedometer gave me the thrust to get out there, breath some fresh air and put some miles behind me. The days of aches and pains are long gone, running wasn't for me but a nice fast pace of walking certainly is.

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