I spent some time going through websites which talk about how keyboard is dirtier than toilet. The stats suggest that public restrooms (incl gym showers) floors roughly have about 2million/Sq inch bacteria. As one can imagine, if a public place has a lot of people walking in with shoes and have damp, dark and warm-enough floor, the bacteria will multiply within minutes. Compared to this, the kitchen floor next to sink has about 500bacteria/sq inch as this part of floor does get wet every now and then but does not see too many of shoes. The outdoor road, especially one which is typically dry and sees sunlight regularly is likely to have 200bacteria/sq inch bacteria as bacteria just cannot multiply without water and in direct sunlight. This is especially true if the surroundings gets a clean slate start every year after brutal winter (for them!) like the one we have in New York city.

So doing simple math, for every barefoot step I take in gym shower room exposes me to  roughly same number of bacteria as 10,000 steps on outdoor roads. With 200 steps per minutes thats about 50min of running. So if a walk from lockers to shower and back is 30 steps, thats amounts to 25 hours of running outside. Since I never run more than 10hrs in any one week, I conclude that I just need to avoid one visit to Gym to make up for exposure to bacteria. (And all this doesnt even correct for me going through three rounds of scrubbing with antibaterical soap when I get home)