In a speech to his graduating classmates, a Peking University doctoral student raised eyebrows on Wednesday after he claimed he walked almost 100,000 steps in half a day.

Zhuang Fangdong, a representative of excellent doctoral graduates and a member of the university mountaineering team, claimed in his graduation speech that he had walked 98,800 steps in just half a day. "The WeChat step counter showed 98,800 steps which was completed in half a day, not 24 hours," Zhuang told his schoolmates. 

Some people questioned Zhuang's self-proclaimed accomplishment. "Walking 100,000 steps is the equivalent to walking 80 to 100 kilometers. If you ran at a speed of 10 kilometers per hour, it would still take 10 hours to finish such a long distance," an expert in sports rehabilitation surnamed Xie said in an interview. 

An online search of data from step counters shows that running a 50-kilometer marathon takes a man about 55,000 steps.

"I didn't walk 90,000 steps every day. Only when I was doing extreme training with my mountaineering team did I walk that many steps," Zhuang told the Zhoushan Daily.

Zhuang got support from his mountaineering teammates who posted screenshots of their WeChat step counter on Peking University Weiming BBS, showing that they have walked over 70,000 steps (42.8km) in 10 hours.

Global Times