Dirk Schrama is not your ordinary runner and Withings Pulse owner. He is an amateur ultra runner who works in the obstacle course business. Dirk came to our attention through a tweet he posted. He attached his Daily Activity graph, which was displaying an impressive +100K step count! He even used the #WantMoreBadges hashtag to ask us for new virtual trophies to unlock – he had already gone through all of the existing Daily Steps badges (the biggest one being 60K/day). That’s when we offered him to become an inspiration for the upcoming “100K steps a day” badge, and to collaborate with us through regular guest blog posts. Guess what? Dirk agreed! Here is his first contribution to our blog/Community Hub. Don’t hesitate to drop a question or remark in the comments!
Dirk Schrama, an ultra runner’s testimonial
One of the things I like about my Withings Pulse is that I can collect badges. I think badges keep motivating you to:
- Take an extra step,
- Climb some extra stairs,
- Walk a bit more,
- And stay healthy!
The World Health Organization recommends that you take at least 10.000 steps a day to stay healthy, but you can do more and collect some extra badges.
On one day I did a lot of walking and got the Seven-League badge for 30.000 steps. I was wondering what the maximum amount of steps was and what other badges I could unlock. There had to be a limit!
I decided to take my Pulse on one of my longer runs, the Brocken Challenge. This is an 80 kilometers long race in Germany that finishes on top of a snowy mountain. I was sure I was going to get some new badges on that day.
It’s race day!
I walked around in the morning and collected my first steps before the race. We started at 06:00 AM and I ran for almost 10 hours. It was a beautiful run and at the end of the day we all arrived on top of the mountain. There weren’t any busses to pick us up after the finish line, because we were in a National Park. This is why we had to walk back to
the nearest small town, for about 2 hours.
That’s when I collected some more steps – I was curious to see the result for the day. Once we were back at the hotel and it was late in the evening I looked at the Pulse and saw I just passed the “magical” limit of 100.000 steps in one day.
New activity badges!
My Pulse synced with my phone and I received an email telling me I got a new badge. I had unlocked the Hermes badge for walking 60K steps. Hermes was the messenger of the Gods of Olympus and did a lot of running and walking.
But there was no e-mail about the 100.000 steps badge! This meant that 60.000 steps was the limit. Back home in the Netherlands I went online and checked the Health Mate where all your badges are.
60.000 was indeed the limit and I was slightly disappointed for not getting a badge for my accomplishment. So that’s when I uploaded my screenshot to Twitter to tell Withings they really needed a new badge. I hope that pretty soon I won’t be the only one with this special badge. Oh, by the way… I think we also need more Lifetime elevation badges 😉
Dirk Schrama
A note from Withings: for your information, Geri Coady who created the original Withings badges representing daily and lifetime achievements, is working on the 100.000 steps badge with Dirk in mind.
