8,500 and 300 are two of the numbers that experts suggest hold the key to good health and long life.
Eight and a half thousand represents the number of daily steps a recent international study found was the key to sustaining weight loss after dieting, a mild downward adjustment from the commonly used 10,000 steps, which has been seen as the magic number to unlock well-being and longevity.
The other figure, 300, is the minimum number of seconds in a day (or five minutes) any one of us needs to be moderately active – take a short walk with purpose, for instance – to help prevent premature death.
Perhaps the point of the first figure is that every step counts and the root of the second is that something is always better than nothing.
To those two statistics, let us add two ambitious numbers: 5,000 and 365 – and attach a story of rehabilitation and perseverance.
Carl Davies, author, teacher and long-time Abu Dhabi resident, is planning his life around those two numbers for the next 12 months, walking five kilometres or 5,000 metres a day for a year to raise awareness and support for younger stroke survivors.
If his name sounds familiar, Davies featured in The National when his self-published memoir Stroke Me – My Road to Recovery was released in the autumn of 2024, which presented a gripping and honest account of his own lived experience as a survivor.
“Statistically speaking I should not be here,” he wrote in the book about his haemorrhagic stroke, “but here I am”.
He spent 17 weeks in hospital after this serious medical event in 2024, with his days shaped by rehabilitation and therapy sessions. The long road of recovery is rarely straightforward or fast-track.
The World Health Organisation estimates that 15 million people globally have a stroke each year. About five million of that number die and another five million live with permanent disabilities. Men account for the majority of that topline figure.
Davies was about to turn 55 two years ago when his life changed, but around one in four stroke patients treated by Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi are under 45 years old. While strokes among people younger than that are less common, they are not unheard of. Neonatal strokes can and do occur.
He has been walking five kilometres a day in the parks and neighbourhoods of Abu Dhabi since the start of May on his mission to raise support for fellow survivors, which is why here I am walking post-sunrise circuits with him in Delma Park on day 19 of his year-long odyssey.
Even in the early morning, people are busying themselves at the workout stations dotted around the park, other people are running and walking around the track. The pleasing sound of a tennis ball on racquet punctuated our perambulation as a competitive doubles match unfolded on a nearby court. Davies explained why he had begun this 12-month quest as we walked.
“I am a normal guy with a bit of an issue who wants to give back in some way. I find walking hard, I find walking for an hour harder on my legs than my brain. I always try to stretch myself,” he says.
Our laps take place with little fanfare. There is currently no corporate sponsor for his endeavours. This is the journey of someone determined to finish what he has started – and to get up and do it all again the following day.
Walking any distance is “good for the soul”, says Davies, but it is also a physical and mental challenge. Some of that challenge comes from what he has previously termed a “currently redundant left arm and significantly altered gait”.
“My left leg is still weak,” he says with candour, as we continue our rotations of what might be regarded as his “home” park in mid-island Abu Dhabi. It seems strong enough to me.
Mirroring the action of the walk itself, he is focused on what is in front of him rather than what came before.
“Two years ago, I was facing an uncertain future in a hospital bed. Look where I am now,” he says, before reeling off a long list of daily tasks and professional responsibilities he now does with certainty and conviction. Walking five kilometres a day is another line on that growing agenda.
Davies posts a short clip on social media after each walk. He describes himself as a “reluctant conspirator” on TikTok via his Podfather Walks handle, but his posts are finding an audience and he is open to walking with anyone and anywhere in the city if it helps deliver the message and raise awareness about strokes, survival and support.
With that, our walk is at an end. Tomorrow is another day and another “walk in the park” for a survivor of a condition that is the antithesis of that idiom.
