How Many Steps Are in a Kilometre? It Depends on You
The honest answer to the most common step-count question: why it ranges from about 1,250 to 1,550, and how to find your own number in five minutes.
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The StepWheel Journal
Thirty long reads on the ideas behind the calculators: stride and pace, zones and formulas, gears and tyres, and the honest arithmetic of journeys. Every article is written for this site, checked against its tool, and updated when the thinking improves.
Is 10,000 Steps a Day Enough? What the Walking Evidence Actually Supports
The number came from an advert. The health benefits, though, are real — here is where the evidence suggests the returns level off, and how pace changes the answer.
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Walking Pace, Explained: What Your Minutes per Kilometre Say About You
From ambling to genuinely brisk: the pace bands of everyday walking, what each is good for, and how to move yourself one band faster without misery.
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How to Measure Your Stride Length at Home (Three Methods, Ranked)
Tape-measure, wet-footprint and known-route methods for finding your real stride — and why the ten-step version beats the rest.
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The Riegel Formula: How One Exponent Predicts Your Marathon From Your 10K
Pete Riegel's 1977 insight still powers nearly every race predictor. How it works, where it shines, and the three situations where it quietly fails.
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Negative Splits: Why the Fastest Races Are Run Backwards
Championship races and world records share a pattern: the second half faster than the first. The physiology, the maths, and how to pace your own version.
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Karvonen vs Percentage of Max: Which Zone System Deserves Your Trust?
Two ways to draw the same five zones can disagree by ten beats. Here is the reserve method, the simple method, and the resting heart rate that decides between them.
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BMI, Honestly: A Useful Number With Named Blind Spots
Invented in the 1830s, adopted by insurers, argued about ever since. What BMI measures well, the four groups it misreads, and the two cheap checks to pair with it.
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MET Values: The Hidden Table Behind Every Calorie Calculator
One MET is sitting still. Everything else is a multiple. How the Compendium of Physical Activities powers every burn estimate you have ever seen — and where it wobbles.
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BMR and TDEE Without the Mystique: Finding Your Real Maintenance Calories
The Mifflin-St Jeor equation is the best one-line estimate of resting burn — and still only an estimate. How to use it as a starting bid, then let your own data correct it.
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The Navy Tape Method: Body Fat From a Neck, a Waist and a Logarithm
Developed for sailors, refined by use: how the US Navy circumference method estimates body composition with a tape measure, and how to take measurements it can trust.
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What Is a Good Average Cycling Speed? A Question With Three Honest Answers
16 km/h can be heroic and 30 km/h can be ordinary — it depends on the bike, the terrain and the wind. How to benchmark your average speed fairly.
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Gear Inches, Development and Ratios: Cycling’s Three Gears Languages
One gear, three descriptions, a century of arguments. Translating between ratio, gear inches and metres of development — and which to use for what.
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Cadence: Why Spinning Usually Beats Grinding (and When It Doesn’t)
The same speed can cost your knees or your lungs. The physiology of pedalling speed, the 80–95 rpm consensus, and the climbs where grinding is honest work.
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Set Your Bike Computer Right: Tyre Circumference and the 3% You’re Losing
A wheel-size setting from the wrong table quietly falsifies every ride. Reading your ETRTO code, computing its circumference, and the rollout test that settles all arguments.
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L/100 km or MPG? The Fuel Consumption Unit Feud, Settled
One unit rises when the car improves; the other falls. Why Europe and America measure thirst in opposite directions, and how to convert without tears.
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Five Training Paces From One 5K: Easy, Marathon, Tempo, Interval, Repetition
A single honest 5K can anchor an entire training week. What each pace is for, the physiology it targets, and the ratios that connect them.
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The Easy-Day Mistake: Why Your Slow Runs Aren’t Slow Enough
The most common training error is not laziness — it is easy runs done moderately. The physiology of the grey zone and three tests that keep easy honest.
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How to Pace a 10K: The Race That Punishes Impatience Twice
The 10K is too long to sprint and too short to settle. A kilometre-by-kilometre pacing strategy, the two classic blow-ups, and your split plan.
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The Wall: What Actually Happens at Kilometre 32
It is not weakness and it is not (only) tired legs. The glycogen arithmetic behind marathon running's most famous catastrophe, and the three ways runners postpone it.
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Your Real Maximum Heart Rate Is Probably Not 220 Minus Your Age
The world's most used fitness formula carries a ±10 beat spread. How max heart rate is actually distributed, and the field tests that find yours.
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Treadmill Pace Is Not Outdoor Pace: Converting Between Two Different Sports
The belt helps, the air doesn't push back, and the display flatters. Why treadmill numbers feel easier, the 1% incline rule, and how to translate sessions honestly.
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Walking for Weight Loss: The Realistic Version
Walking burns less per hour than running and works better for many people anyway. The arithmetic of a walking-based deficit, and how to structure it so it survives month three.
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The Deficit That Stalled: Five Reasons the Maths Stopped Working (None Is a Broken Metabolism)
Three weeks of discipline, a flat scale. The five ordinary explanations — from water to weekends — and the audit that finds yours.
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Gearing for Hills: How Low Is Low Enough?
The question every hill answers for you if you don't ask it first. Working out a climbing gear from gradient, cadence and the speed you can balance at.
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Budgeting a Road Trip Properly: Fuel Is Only the First Line
The fuel figure is exact and incomplete. Building a road-trip budget that includes the costs that ambush travellers, with the fuel maths done right.
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The Average Speed Illusion: Why Your Journey Takes Longer Than the Maths Promised
You cruised at 110. You averaged 68. The arithmetic of mixed-speed journeys, and how to estimate arrival times that survive contact with reality.
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Percentage Change: The Calculation That Lies Without Lying
A 50% fall and a 50% rise do not cancel. Percentage points are not percents. The three shapes of percentage questions and how each gets abused.
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Age Categories in Sport: Why Your Rival Is 39 Years and 364 Days Old
Age on race day, age on 31 December, age at last birthday — the same person has three sporting ages. How categories are set, and how to compute yours for any rule.
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Resting Heart Rate: The One-Number Health Diary You Already Own
Measured in bed, trended over months, resting heart rate quietly reports fitness, fatigue and occasionally illness. How to measure it properly and read what it says.
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