Goines On: Counting steps

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Now that Goines was walking for 30 minutes rather than the 20 he had previously thought sufficient, he wanted to make sure that he never went too far away to get back near the 30-minute mark. Obviously, he shouldn’t go farther than 15 minutes away from home. That was easy, since the Runkeeper app on his phone alerted him at each 5-minute mark. And he already knew, for three of his possible return routes, the spot that was 5 minutes away from home.
    It all depended, of course, on his speed, on how many steps he was taking. How many steps did he take in 5 minutes? He had never counted – that he could remember. He decided to count his steps and find out. He saw right away that he didn’t want to – or need to – count literally every step, left, right, left right. He walked fast and it was too easy to lose count or confuse left and right. He could simply count every time his right foot came down (which was regularly the same time his cane came down). He could count the taps of his cane.
    Off he went, one-tap, two-tap, three….
    He seemed to be able to count even while he thought about other things, which both surprised and pleased him. Counting didn’t seem to interfere with thinking. But did thinking interfere with counting? He had reached 285 when the first 5-minute alert sounded, but thought he should double-check it, to make sure he actually could count and think at the same time. He started another count: 290. It was kind of fun to both count and think, so he did it for another 5 minutes, and another – both at about 290. Inevitably he started to wonder how many steps he took in a mile at this walking rate, which Runkeeper was telling him was approximately 20 minutes per mile. That would be 4 times the 290, and then double it. Goines started to do the calculation but immediately sensed that he was losing count. Thinking while counting seemed to be one thing, but counting (or thinking) while calculating seemed to be quite another. He remembered reading in one of those collections of writings by the physicist Richard Feynman how Feynman had tried to estimate how much time was passing as he talked with friends. He had simply counted seconds to himself as he talked, discovering that his rate of counting was fairly constant. Goines’ rate of walking seemed fairly constant too, even as he thought about other things.
    Later, Goines checked his arithmetic by calculating the length of his stride: 5,280 feet in a mile divided by 2,320 strides equals 2.25 feet, approximately. That seemed about right. Goines no longer had the stride of the younger, taller, cane-free man he used to be.

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