Walking Commentary
Thoughts and cycling from Manchester to Rome in 2023
I’ve no idea why I woke up this morning thinking about Terry who memorably lamented ‘I could’ve been somebody’ in On the Waterfront. Thoughts of Terry somehow dragged up lots of stuff, including toilet rolls, from the depths of my mind.
‘What are you, a sorcerer? / Only at home. In company I drink out of the cup.’
– Take it from Here, BBC radio comedy with Frank Muir and Dennis Norden
I had a bad few days recently. But first, since I’m not qualified to have opinions on why my days were so bad, here are a few weasel words.
Caveat emptor: my musings may not be complete let alone correct.
The full story starts with a fear of failure. It starts with the worry that my attempts to manage my cholesterol with diet were failing. It ended with a realisation that I wasn’t able to finish any of my daily journals.
We are taught early in life that heart muscle repairs itself very slowly. You probably worried that it will wear out one day. So you determine to look after your primary pump by eating carefully and taking suitable exercise. You do what you can to keep the pipes clean and flexible so that your heart can pump some 8000 litres of blood around your body each and every day for whatever term you consider to be your life expectancy. That life expectancy in Ireland was 79.6 years for men and 83.4 for women according to the CSO in 2017.
I checked my Fitbit today. A watch that spies on me. A gift. I’ve been happy to have it because it counts my steps, monitors my sleep patterns and tracks my average resting heart rate. It even provides the time of day on demand. Which isn’t that often because I have an internal clock that’s reliable to within a few minutes.
I’ve been confidently supplying my bio-data to the Fitbit corporation since December 2018. They used to be known as Healthy Metrics Research Inc which tells you what they set out to do.
I’ve travelled rather more widely during this curfew than you might expect. It matters not that I only leave the house to walk the dog, replenish the cupboards or sometimes ferry our daughter to her hospital treatments. Even those journeys are more than most may be able to do.
My Fitbit encourages me with milestone reminders that are a disinformation of virtual comparisons. I’ve never walked the length of India or chased Monarch butterflies in migration. I suppose I have ascended to the clouds, not so often on foot as in planes. But I can’t ever wear the ruby slippers earned this time last year on a 50 km hike across the Dublin Mountains Way. That’s a walk memorialised by real effort, actual pain, wonderful exhilaration, some boredom, wind driven chill, magnificent views and the stupidity of postponed toilet breaks. And yet, here I am, writing about ‘badges’ and showing my version of them as a virtual walker’s map depicted in iPhone photo ‘badges’.
