Walking the walk

In the grand scheme of things, today was a pretty relaxed day, as far as heading to different events. I got up on time and made my way to the triathlon course for the 8 a.m. start, only to find once I got there that the event had just been cancelled due to the water quality in the Seine. So, I packed up my stuff and went back to the media center for a few hours, wrote a couple of stories and got a great sandwich from the cafe in the basement of the Palais de Congres before making my way to the urban sports park, where I planned to see a little BMX park competition and some 3v3 basketball.

By the time I got to La Concorde, the site of the urban skate park, my iPhone had already recorded more than 10,000 steps at 11 a.m. That's what today's blog post is about.

During the pandemic, when I was unemployed for a month and then only had one job for a few more months, I walked all the time, just to get out of my apartment. There were days when I logged more than 10 miles, mostly on portions of the Cotton Valley Rail Trail between Wolfeboro and Wakefield. Once my busy seasons started up again in the sports world and my job was a thing, that mileage was greatly reduced.

However, when I'm working in the bakery I routinely top 10,000 steps in an eight-hour shift and on days when I'm not working there, I still try to get in a few miles in the morning. My first full day here in Paris I logged more than 13,000 steps and that has been the lowest number so far in my week here in the City of Light. Yesterday was the second lowest at more than 14,000, but Sunday was more than 35,000 (a lot at Versailles) and today is more than 26,000 steps. And if my phone hadn't died before my walk home from the Opening Ceremony, I'm guessing Friday's 22,000 steps would have been well over 30,000.

Obviously, there is a lot of walking involved in the Olympics and it seems to be more this year, at least to me, than in years past. A lot of that has to do with us using public transportation. The public transportation stops are not always right near the venue, as was the case at both venues I went to today, the triathlon and the urban sports park. The media buses don't run between venues a lot, but the good news with them is that at least they park relatively close to the venue in most cases if I am heading back to the media center, which I did today after triathlon. 

And then there's all the walking we do underground. The Paris Metro system is pretty incredible, but there's like a maze of tunnels moving around under the city. At one stop you can seemingly go down an endless amount of escalators or stairs and end up at a different line going in a different direction. While I've grown more confident in my abilities (as this blog post mentions) I still am a little unsure at times and am concerned I'm walking the wrong underground path and I'll end up in a French sewer with Jean Valjean.

Whatever the case may be, one week is down, I've walked a ton, I've seen some cool events and talked to some people with interesting jobs. But now... it's bed time. 

Paris La Defense Arena, home of swimming in the Paris Olympics, involved a bit of walking to get there.