WALK YOUR WAY TO FITNESS

Millions of people know the pleasures of walking. From direct health benefits to a time of meditation or contemplation, walking provides fitness and emotional health. The only hard part of walking is starting. Here's how to make it easier:

Realize the benefits. Walking lowers blood pressure, builds bone strength, helps burn excess body fat, increases cardiovascular fitness, eases chronic low-back pain, and boosts the body's natural immune system. Additionally, walking can reduce the severity of depression, improve mood and mental performance, and increase longevity.
Choose a flat, smooth walking course. Start with a route that will not challenge you with steep hills or other physical barriers. Your goal is to find a path that lets you walk uninterrupted for as long as possible.
Take convenience over scenery. It is more important that you maintain a regular schedule of walking than to find the perfect scenic path on an infrequent basis.
Seek firm footing. Paved, graveled, or bark mulch surfaces let you set a brisk pace and maintain it safely. Uneven surfaces can disrupt the steady rhythm you want to establish with your movements. Remember to walk facing traffic if your route takes you through areas with no sidewalks.
Put personal safety first. Walk in areas where other people are exercising or working. You may want to find a partner to walk with.
Choose the right shoes. Many "walking" shoes are designed for strolling, not for active aerobic walking. Check the flexibility of the sole by bending the shoe with your hands. Look for more movement in the ball of the foot. The heel needs to have shock absorption since the walker's heel hits the ground first.
Let fitness be your guide. Make it your goal to walk for at least 30 minutes, including five to six minutes of warm-up and cool-down on each end and 20 minutes of aerobic effort in the middle.
Pace yourself. An average starting pace for healthy walkers falls between 2.5 and 3.5 miles per hour - a mile in 24 to 17 minutes. Brisk walking is defined as 3.5 to 4 miles per hour. But the key to spirited walking is not so much how fast you move as how fast your heart beats. Set a pace that pumps up your heart rate and your breathing.
Walk regularly. Three days a week, minimum. Add days if you want and if you are physically ready. Check with your doctor if you have questions about how much walking to attempt.
Make a commitment. The kind of walking that builds cardiovascular strength and mental control asks for a commitment. Walk regularly. Walk fast enough that your breathing becomes slightly heavy. That's when you'll encounter the challenges that give your mind a workout, too.
Work through the resistance. Resistance shows up on every vigorous walk, and often more than once. It's the voice that thinks this is too much work. It's the urge to turn around and cut a workout short, the temptation to postpone a walk until the weather gets better or the holidays are over. Confronting that resistance requires a partnership of mental and physical effort.

Carolyn Scott Kortge is a masters racewalker who holds bronze and silver medals from the USA Track and Field Association's National Masters Championship and was formerly ranked among the top racewalkers in her age group. A journalist, Kortge's articles have appeared in Newsweek, Modern Maturity, and Hemispheres. She lives in Eugene, Ore.

From The Spirited Walker: Fitness Walking for Clarity, Balance and Spiritual Connection by Carolyn Scott Kortge, copyright (c) 1998. Reprinted by permission of HarperSanFrancisco, a division of HarperCollins Publishers.

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