Walking Rambles

A daily journal of this walker's experience on the journey to health, happiness and a 10 K race/walk. Good weather and bad.

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We live in a fast-paced society. Walking slows us down.

Robert Sweetgall

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Happy Halloween!

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Walking - No Advance Degree Required

The Guide to Walking which came with the cool pedometer I purchased to help me train for my first 10K walking race, makes the claim that walking, unlike many other fitness activities today, requires no special pre-requisites for walkers to be successful. Instead walking is one of the few physical fitness activities that we all do naturally. Okay, I'll buy that, but now that I've read the Guide fully and been following a training plan for the past 3 weeks, there are some helpful walking pointers that I think are worth sharing.

We've covered Posture in a previous blog post, however, here are three other factors to keep in mind for your walking training to be both beneficial and successful.

First, take deep, regular breaths, in through your nose and out through your mouth. And never hold your breath, which is true for any fitness activity. We all have a tendency to do this; hold our breath as we concentrate or exert ourselves. But, try to catch yourself as it obviously deprives your body of needed oxygen and also causes us to stiffen up, which can lead to muscle strain. I speak from personal experience when I say I know what it's like to hold your breath while exercising, and even though it's hard to stop, we all need to focus on this. Good breathing really does improve our exercise routine.

Second, try to keep an even natural pace and walk, don't run. If you are walking for fitness or in training for an event like a 5K or 10K, you should be walking briskly but not fast. If you're becoming out of breath, you're going to quickly. Slow down. I've been practising with the pace function on the pedometer and really recommend it for helping to make pacing yourself a regular habit.

Third, focus on your stride. It should be long and smooth. You are aiming for something effortless. To keep you balanced don't forget to swing your arms at your side as you move and if you're interested in measuring your stride there is some helpful information information about stride measurement here.

Finally, pay attention to your body as you walk. If it feels good, keep going. If you start to experience pain or discomfort stop for the day and consider making an appointment with your doctor. It could be something as simple as the shoes you are wearing, perhaps they don't fit properly. Or maybe there's something going on  that you need to check into, like an injury that's developing. As with any fitness activity, particularly when it's new, don't ignore discomfort.

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The best remedy for a short temper is a long walk.

Jacqueline Schiff

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After a day's walking everything has twice its usual value.

George MacAuley Trevelyan

[airows]

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moneyisnotimportant:

“When I believe in something, I fight like hell for it.”

-Steve McQueen

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Two New Walking Friends.

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He who limps is still walking.

Joan Rivers

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One step at a time is good walking.

Chinese proverb

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Keep Your Head Up!

Yesterday I clocked just over 6K while training for my first 10K walking event. It felt great. But as I cooled down, I realized that I haven't fully committed to a training mindset yet. Yes, I have daily goals. And yes, I'm keeping a log of distance covered each day. But, I think my training needs to be ramped up with some daily expert advice. So, starting today that’s what I'm going to include here. I'll review an expert Walking Tip, apply it to my own walk and share my findings here in Walking Rambles.

Today's Tip:  Posture is Key.

This comes from the folks who make the SPORTLINE pedometer, the gadget I now swear by as a daily walker. According to SPORTLINE, good posture has three components. First, keep your head up when walking. Second, keep your spine straight, no slouching. And third, look straight ahead as you walk. In addition, arms and shoulders should remain loose and you should look down occasionally to avoid tripping. Sounds reasonable, so how does this play out in practice?

Walking with Good Posture.

Went for a 90 minute walk and tried to focus on our three components. I was particularly conscious of my posture as I had a backpack on, which can be quite constraining. I found that swinging my arms lightly helped. It’s good for balance, can help you get a good rhythm going as you walk and keeps your shoulders loose.

I walked at a good pace on a route that took me along both quiet residential streets and busy thoroughfares. Keeping your head up and looking straight ahead certainly helps when you’re trying to navigate a crowd.

At just over the halfway mark of the walk, I stopped at the local natural food market and loaded up on good stuff to eat and some natural supplements. This meant my backpack probably weighed 10 pounds more for the walk home. Here’s where attention to posture really seemed to pay off.

By thinking consciously of my posture I was able to still move at a good pace all the way home and avoid developing any aches and pains from the full backpack. Pausing occasionally to ensure the backpack was adjusted properly helped too. Not to mention it gave me a chance to get in some fun window shopping. Ladies, there are some great fall boots this year.

Oh, and as I put away the organic treats, I really do get the looking straight ahead thing now. When you make a point of doing this and aiming your eyes at least one block ahead, it’s not only good for motivation, because you see the distance you’re covering,  it’s also a good safety check. You see what’s coming at you, and if there’s something or someone you might want to avoid, you’ve got time and distance to do so. All in all, focusing on posture is a great tip.

So put on your walking shoes and remember good posture is key to enjoying and benefiting from your walk.  Keep your head up, your spine straight, look straight ahead and don’t forget shoulders loose and gently swing your arms. See you on the walking trails!

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Of all exercises walking is the best.

Thomas Jefferson

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"The wheels on the bus go round and round." Saw this on a recent walking ramble.

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Last Week's Walking Lessons

I'm now starting the second week of my program to make walking a daily event and to improve my overall health with daily exercise. So, I thought I'd take just a moment to reflect on what I've learned after week one.

First, here's what I found easy this past week. When I built walking into my daily routine, for example, by walking instead of driving to pick up some library books on hold, hitting my daily goal of walking 10,000 steps became easy. On Thursday, which was Election Day here in Ontario, I walked more than 21,000 steps with ease, simply by volunteering to do both inside and outside scrutineering for a local candidate. And the weather was warm and beautiful, which made walking the neighbourhood fun and I got some good photos of local trees changing colour. I love the red of the one above.

On the flip side, my energy dropped to almost zilch, the day after the Election, simply because I was tired... I put in a very long day Thursday, and the post-election party didn't end until midnight. With Canadian Thanksgiving weekend starting on the Friday and family arriving to visit, I had a tough time this weekend pushing myself to exercise. Too many distractions. And with all the Turkey, stuffing and pumpkin tarts, I was ready for bed before 10 pm last night.

This brings me to my lessons learned last week. Lesson 1, get off to a quick exercise start first thing in the day, with either an early morning walk or a 30 minute stint on my exercise bike. Seeing those numbers climb on the pedometer is inspiring and when you see you're already 50% of the way towards your goal, you want to push yourself to finish the other 50%. Lesson 2, put a block of time aside for exercise everyday, just as if it was a meeting or social commitment. This way, it's far less likely that I'll let my exercise commitment slide. And Lesson 3, make sure to celebrate successes on a regular basis. I've just returned from seeing the new Hugh Jackman movie, about boxing robots, with my sons. A film with lots of action, great music and some terrific boxing sequences seemed a reasonable celebration for walking 25 km this past week.

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Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time.

Steven Wright

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No great achievement is possible without persistent work.

Bertrand Russell - Philosopher, Mathematician, Humanitarian, Nobel Prize Winner

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Of Pearls and Walking

Yesterday, instead of taking a great fall walk, I met my bare minimum daily walking goal of 30 minutes by going to the health food store and the local pharmacy in the rain. Not a great afternoon, but the evening got better as we had a big family dinner with tri tip steak from Royal Beef (is there better tri tip in Toronto?). To wrap things up, the whole family, including two nieces, gathered round the table to help my twins finish of a school math project called: Pearls of Wisdom. What follows is a bit of musing about pearls, goal setting and the need for clear expectations in life.

Right now, I'm doing a lot of thinking about goal setting and the relationship between clear goals and achievement. In my case, my ultimate walking goal is to complete a 10K walk before the end of 2011. To do this, I've set monthly, weekly and daily walking goals, as I work myself up to my ultimate goal. As for why I'm doing this, there are a number of reasons, but three that I keep in mind each day are: it's good for me (physical health goal), it's a de-stressor (mental health goal) and it's fun (happiness goal).  Looking at the Pearls of Wisdom assignment, which my kids found incredibly frustrating, I'm not sure any of us understood what the goal really was.

The instruction sheet outlines 3 steps to the project. First the kids had to pick 5 math topics to research. One of the options they chose was, the Life of Plato. Next, once they had 5 topics, they had to present their chosen facts for each topic in a visual way, in this case on the faces of one of 5 Platonic solids. Finally, they were to take each of the 5 completed shapes, with facts on each face, and string them on ribbon, so they ended up with a necklace with 5 shapes hanging from it.

I could see the potential for fun in this. But, the question I was asking myself at 10 o'clock last night as we were finishing up is, "why are we doing this?" What's the goal in terms of the grade 8 math curriculum? When asked, all my kids could do was shrug and clean up the glue sticks. This is not to say that the two sets of boys completing the Pearl project at our house this weekend didn't have any fun. They did. But thinking about math goals for the year, I'm at a loss as to what the purpose of this assignment really is. This brings me to the purpose of my musing today.

Whatever goal we're trying to achieve, whether it's necklaces of math pearls or completing a 10K race/walk, we need to be SMART. SMART goals are Specific (S), Measurable (M), Achievable (A), Reasonable/Relevant (R) and Timebound. (T). This weekend I saw 4 boys struggle with an assignment requiring them to make math necklaces... not so sure they could see the Relevance to this activity. I've now left a message for the teacher in the hopes that she can provide this explanation, so the boys get more engaged in finishing the assignment off. As for my 10K goal, I'm confident that it passes the SMART goal test. In particular it's Achievable, because there are several 10K walks around Toronto before Christmas and it's Relevant because, with Thanksgiving just around the corner, we can all benefit from a good walk to counteract those holiday calories.

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Week One Best Walk: 13,000 Steps!