Garmin has logged intensity minutes and steps since July 2021, across a full-time wheelchair user becoming a cyclist becoming a walker again. Read separately, they're two fitness metrics. Read together, they're the record of one body running two different physiological engines on the same gated schedule.
From July 2021 to January 2023 I was a full-time wheelchair user. Wheelchair rolling had no separate category on the Garmin Fenix, so it was counted as steps: 540,424 of them across that first year, 133 intensity minutes a week on average. That's the floor both data streams are measured from. One machine, one set of sensors, recording a body that hadn't yet found cycling.
In July 2022, on that same rolling-as-steps count, I sailed on the Tall Ship SV Tenacious as a wheelchair user. February 2023 is where both datasets change shape at once: I adapted a bike, and walking begins to show up in the record as its own distinct activity rather than a proxy for rolling.
Off the wheelchair, onto an adapted bike. Intensity minutes reached 367/week in 2022–23, the year the adapted bike came in partway through, then rose to 386/week the following year as cycling became the established, repeatable pattern rather than a new addition. Steps moved differently across the same span: 1,001,211 for 2022–23, still carrying the wheelchair months, with the all-time single week step record, 60,547, set in the second of those two years, 30 July 2023.
That week record still stands. It belongs to the earliest cycling year, two years before the gym stack, the rucking block, or the knee injury that would later reshape the walking data entirely.
| Period | Avg Min/Week | Total Steps | Step Distance | Phase |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 Jul 21–17 Jul 22 | 133 | 540,424 | 288.7mi | Full-time wheelchair; rolling counted as steps |
| 18 Jul 22–16 Jul 23 | 367 | 1,001,211 | 524.9mi | Wheelchair to Jan '23, then adapted bike |
| 17 Jul 23–14 Jul 24 | 386 | 894,813 | 466.8mi | Cycling established; all-time week step record set |
| 15 Jul 24–13 Jul 25 | 460 | 770,787 | 399.8mi | Gym + sauna stack added; lowest step year, highest minutes year |
| 14 Jul 25–12 Jul 26 | 405 | 1,348,541 | 719.2mi | Record step year; durability-focused minutes, pulled back from peak on purpose |
2024–25 is the highest minutes year and the lowest step year in five years. The chart below shows why that pairing matters.
Minutes climb steadily from 367 to 386/week between 2022–23 and 2023–24 while steps keep climbing too, then the two lines properly cross: 2024–25 is the peak minutes year (460) and the trough steps year, and 2025–26 reverses it again, the step peak year with minutes settled back to 405, the clearest single data point that cycling and walking are not interchangeable load on this system: they're two separate accounts.
The biggest step month on record and one of the biggest minute blocks on record both sit inside the same twelve months as an active cartilage tear and a new structural diagnosis. Neither stream slowed down to wait for the other to catch up, or for the joint underneath both of them to heal.
From 2023 to 2025, Merrell Moab 3 Gore-Tex. Walking on those was extremely painful. The right knee subluxed consistently, 50+ times every mile. In the first year, every single footfall subluxed the knee, and the pain was excruciating. Two years of the step data on this page were logged in that shoe.
June 2025: switched to Vivobarefoot Primus Lite II Knit for spring and summer, zero-drop, barefoot-style. The change was significant. Subluxation frequency dropped hugely. Walking without a knee subluxing has gone from the exception to the norm.
From October 2025: Vivobarefoot Tracker Winter III SG boots for autumn, winter, and wet weather, same zero-drop principle, sealed for the conditions the record November 2025 step month (section 05) was walked in.
What the shoe change didn't fix: severe pain in the right knee with every footfall. It makes no difference whether I walk slowly or at pace. That's not a symptom that responds to intervention. It's another baseline, like the others on this page.
The step week record stands apart from everything else on this list: set in July 2023, before the gym stack, before the rucking, before the injury, before the shoe change. The single hardest week of walking ever logged still belongs to that earlier, uninjured period; the minutes records all belong to 2025 and 2026, after the engine was built.
Two records, day and month, sit inside the post-injury rucking block, walked in Vivobarefoot Tracker Winter III SG boots, after both shoe switches were already in place. The three-day minutes record sits six months later still, on a system carrying a repaired-but-managed knee, a new autonomic diagnosis, and the same zero-drop shoes.
Walking is orthostatic loading. Cycling is muscle-pump activation with haemodynamic support built in. They carry different autonomic costs on a body with structural baroreflex failure, which is why the chart in section 04 crosses rather than tracks. The footwear change in section 06 confirms it from a different angle: a shoe switch cut subluxation frequency hugely, but did nothing for the right knee pain that arrives with every footfall regardless of pace. Some of what walking costs this system is mechanical and fixable. Some of it isn't.
Both streams are gated by the same waking HRV threshold and the same Lag Factor, but they draw on the system differently. This page exists because collapsing them into one number would hide exactly the thing worth seeing. Two engines, run separately, on purpose, by design. Not two readings of the same engine.
If you're managing your own EDS or dysautonomia: these numbers are mine, against my own gated thresholds, built over five years from a wheelchair baseline. Walking and cycling are not interchangeable for me, and they may not be for you either. Your ceiling is your own data, not mine. Use it.
Two engines. One system. Five years of both getting stronger.
Zero medication since 2019. Constant severe pain regardless. That's the baseline underneath both streams. The next twelve months add a Return to Snowdon hike to both streams, the fourth-anniversary retrace of the wheelchair summit conquered with Wheels for Tenacious in 2022, and Walk Across Wales to the walking side of the ledger. Neither line is finished climbing.
#TheTenaciousCyclist