Walking, Fast and Slow

I think I was in the seventh grade at this time.

I was walking from one end of my school to the other. We were days away from some school event and there were a lot of 'things to do'. Suddenly, I had this impulse to jog, and when I say jog, I mean more of running lightly than walking quickly.

My mind quietly told me that jogging, instead of ambling along, could actually turn out to be a time saver. It almost sounded ridiculous to one part of me but I jogged nonetheless.

Over the years, this turned into quite a habit. And I am anything but an athlete. Let me try to define this whim of mine. I jog when traversing a path from A to B such that,

distance (A, B) <= 50 meters.

An incident last year bore testimony to how deeply rooted this habit was. I had barely recovered from a knee dislocation and was standing at my table when someone called out to me. Subconsciously, my limbs commanded me to sprint. I almost tripped before my voluntary controls took over and slapped my reflexes shut.

Cut to yesterday. In one of those reflective shower moments, I found myself asking, "Could this really save any significant amount of time, ever?"

A depleted Android pedometer app and good old Google came in handy to look for an answer.

My pedometer tells me I register ~5000 steps on an average working day (I am discounting weekends for this exercise since walking activity is bound to be more erratic on those days). I can be sure I do not have my phone on me for ~20% of my walking trips on the office floor.

Therefore, average steps per day = 6000

* assumptions/ facts in blue, calculations in black

I am assuming I can (and do) jog half of the times I need to displace myself. So, our calculation base will be 3000 steps.

Average comfortable walking speed of an individual = 3 kmph (this is stated to be 5 kmph here but my experiments with a pedometer point towards this average)

Moderate jogging speed (that which looks socially acceptable) = 5 kmph (lower end of what the internet calls as jogging speed)

Average step size = 70 cm (some adjustment done)

Thus, Distance traveled = 3000 * 70 / (10^5) = 2.1 km

Time saved by jogging = (2.1/ 3 - 2.1/ 5) hrs = 17 mins

Weekdays in a year ~=  250

Time saved in a year = 250 X 17 = 4250 mins = 71 hours

To put this into perspective, let's see what use I could put these additional hours to.

• Indulge in a marathon of the seven seasons of Game of Thrones. Nah, I haven't and I don't want to watch the Game of Thrones. BOOM. There, I said it.
• Go around 3/80th of the world if I were Phileas Fogg.
• Spread these 4250 minutes cautiously over the entire year and snooze the alarm by 10 mins every frickin' day!
• Watch Jo Jeeta Wahi Sikandar 24 times, which is still five short of the number of times I have seen it already
• Play Justin Bieber's Baby 1140 times on loop which is merely 1,391,730,521 times less than the number of times it has actually been played on Youtube.h

Or, write about 140 of such pointless posts!