I caught the “Pause for Thought” feature on Radio 2’s Wake up to Wogan, and although it started with one of those Wogan links where they are having a conversation about something completely staged – in this case how fit Wogan is looking – then seemlessly drop into the visiting speakers thought, it hit a nerve with me today. The speaker today was Sarah Joseph, editor of emel, the Muslim lifestyle magazine. The bulk of her thoughts surrounded the fact that with 3 kids, a full time job, speaking engagements and some volunteer work she had become unfit, and her solution was to get a pedometer and some decent shoes to walk in and put it right by walking over 10,000 steps per day. It had made a huge difference to her life, she was feeling fitter, had more energy and enjoyed the challenge of going from 3,000 steps per day up to 10,000 and beyond.

It was the motivational value of her targets, and specifically the need to have some data so that she knew if she had acheived her target or not, that was most interesting to me. As we get older I have found more and more of my friends getting unfit and becoming overweight. Much like Sarah Joseph we all have busy lives, but those that are able to fit some exercise into their lives have more energy, and stay slimmer! The key motivator seems to be a target, whether that is running a half marathon or riding 1000km it is reaching towards those targets that is key, and setting some data points along the way so that the target it not 6 months away. That is what we like to do with the Wattbike, set a target work towards it, one pedal revolution at a time, and it is the data feedback that keeps it interesting, can I average a few more Watts each session, can I go further with the same average power (improve efficiency), am I lighter, stronger, fitter, healthier. In the end though it always comes down to one thing, does all this effort make me happier, and if done right the answer is most certainly yes.