For years, I’ve wondered how many miles I walk through convention-center halls when I’m attending one conference or another. Now I have a much more accurate sense of that, courtesy of the Jawbone Up wristband that I took to Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress trade show after reviewing it for Discovery News.

My feet got their most intense workout on Monday the 25th, when the sensor-laden wristband recorded me taking 20,475 steps–10.63 miles, in its estimation. As you can see in the screengrab, the Up app’s interface doesn’t scale for those kind of figures; should I file a bug report, or would that be an obnoxious form of bragging?

(Timestamps to the contrary, I was not stumbling around in the pre-dawn hours. I just forgot to switch the Up to Central European Time, six hours ahead of Eastern.)

On Tuesday, the Up indicates I took 17,882 steps and traveled 9.25 miles. I eased up a bit on Wednesday by clocking 14,694 steps and 7.61 miles–most likely because I blew off MWC for a couple of hours to visit Antoni Gaudí’s dreamlike Casa Milà apartments. Like you wouldn’t do the same thing!

I apparently slept poorly on the nights I remembered to switch the Up to sleep mode: three hours and 48 minutes on Monday, 5:09 on Wednesday.

Sadly, even with all that exercise I came home a few pounds heavier. Large quantities of free food provided on an unpredictable schedule lead one to treat each press-room snack, hospitality spread and reception as if it will be your last for the next eight hours.

After the jump: my Flickr set from the show and the trip.