I've been a good boy and hit my 10K step goal for most days this year, but I ended up missing yesterdays. I realize that I have no excuse, but I will try to make one up anyway.
We had a decent snow. I decided to put off my walk until after I shoveled the snow in the driveway. The pile is just shy of 6 feet.
My Garmin is step stingy. It does not give me my full allotment of steps during my regular walks and does not give steps for chores like shoveling snow, mowing the lawn, shopping or when I carry heavy objects. So, while moving a large amount of snow requires more energy than a walk in the park, it does not count toward the daily fitness goal.
Tips on Snow Shoveling.
To make this post worth while to readers, I thought I should give some tips on snow shoveling. I live in Salt Lake City, Utah. The mountain seen above is Utah's Mt Olympus. The city uses salt on the roads.
The first step when shoveling is to set a destination for the snow. It is illegal to shovel snow into the street; so I put the show contaminated with salt in a pile right above the storm gutter. I will pile the snow next to this fence which is seven and a half feet tall (2.3 meters).
The start of the snow was wet; So, the second step is to dig a path to the storm gutter. This cut caused the water at the base of the snow to start draining. This makes the snow lighter. This small cut drained a huge amount of water.
I let the water drain for a bit, then I shoveled the bottom section of the snow. Once again, this helped water flow from the snow.
To make my photogenic snow pile viewed at the top of this page, I throw the snow so that it hits the top of the pile. Most of the snow falls behind the pile. This final picture of the snow against the fence shows that the pile is substantial.
It was dark when I finished shoveling last night. I took the pictures this morning. I decided I didn't want to do a walk in the dark on snow covered streets; So, I missed my step goal.
I present the snow pile as an excuse. But there is no excuse for missing the 10K daily step goal. I hit the goal today and averaged more than 10K steps for the week.
Does that count for anything?
No.
