It seems kind of silly in retrospect, but one of the things I never really thought about before taking a job here in Philadelphia is one of the most basic aspects of city life: walking.
If you’ve ever worked in or moved to a city after living and working out in the sort of suburban sprawl and agricultural expanse one experiences growing up in southern New Jersey, you might be familiar with this most minor form of culture shock. The weather report suddenly becomes something you have to check regularly (and your umbrella’s going to be your new best friend). Comfortable work shoes are suddenly way, way more important. “Where do you want to go to lunch?” is a question made simultaneously simpler and more complex.
You might be shaking your head at my naïveté. I know I am. But getting out from behind the desk or steering wheel is a good thing, for a whole bunch of reasons beyond just getting fresh air — and that’s great, because working at Penn Medicine means there’s a good chance you’re going to be doing plenty of walking.
Wearables like Fitbit and apps like Apple’s Health are designed to tell us, among other things, how much we’re moving around and how it’s benefitting us. But I don’t own a Fitbit, and while health appeals to the data nerd within, it doesn’t scratch that visuospatial itch I can get elsewhere.
That brings us to gmap-pedometer.com, a site I’ve used since my college days to map out running routes. I’d forgotten about it for a long time but recently began poking around at it once more, this time to see how far I was walking in a typical (or busy) workday and how it might be helping me out health-wise. Right off the bat, I decided to check out the walk I make every morning and evening: the one from 30th Street Station to our office at 36th and Market:
About 0.7883 miles, which we’ll go ahead and round to 0.79 miles. That’s one way, of course, so if we double it we get the distance walked just to get to and from the office: 1.5766 miles, which we’ll round off at 1.58 miles. How many calories that burns is slightly less exact a science, and so the answer really depends on what calculator(s) you use, but from what I’ve seen I can round it to around 150 calories, or about 1.5 bananas’ worth.
On busier days, though, when I’m out taking photos at various spots around the Penn Medicine campus, the numbers pile up a bit more. Say, for example, I have to grab some shots of a new building or piece of equipment over at the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine:
That’s 0.7198 miles, which we’ll go ahead and round to 0.72 miles. There and back tacks another 1.44 miles onto the day, which comes out to — and again, this depends on what calculator you use — somewhere around 130 calories, or roughly 1.37 apples’ worth.
Of course, this leaves out all of the walking done within the buildings themselves. As anybody who works in any of Penn Medicine’s hospitals can tell you, getting to the building itself is one thing, but the number of steps you take just getting around within it add up quickly. For something like the Day in the Life project, I wouldn’t be surprised if I walk a solid eight miles or so just wandering around the Penn Medicine buildings and campus. Maybe for this year’s effort, I’ll keep track of it and try to map it out.