For many of us, a daily walk wasn’t part of our repertoire until lockdown 1, when Boris decreed, we were allowed out for exercise just once a day. So began my daily ritual of an early evening walk with my family. I’m ashamed to say that after almost 18 years of living in the same village, I hadn’t spent anytime walking into the amazing countryside surrounding it. Lockdown changed all that, and as lockdown becomes a distant memory, (hopefully), it is something that I plan to continue.
May is National Walking month, the aim is to encourage people to sit less and move more. The challenge is to walk for 20 mins a day. However, my #WalkthisMay challenge, together with colleagues, will be to virtually walk the famous American Route 66 – a total of 2448 miles. Our starting point will be Chicago, Illinois and we aim to ‘arrive’ in Santa Monica, California by the end of the month. Each week we will record our collective miles and share markers, tourist must sees and even recipes along the way.
What will you do?
If you are back in work, maybe you could walk to work, or park further away than usual; you could ditch the car on the school run or walk around your neighbourhood – it’s a great way to connect with people. In lieu of an actual holiday, maybe like me you could virtually walk a foreign destination?
You just need to get up off the sofa. It’s an activity we can all do, regardless of where we live, or how much money we have. You don’t need fancy clothes or any equipment, and you will feel better once you start, the destination isn’t important as long as you get up and go.
We have become a sedentary nation, with the average UK adult doing only *90 minutes of moderate physical activity each week, and more than a quarter of us, 26%, doing 30 minutes or less a week – to put that into context, there are 10,080 minutes in a week and on average we spend 102 of them on the toilet!
This May why not put your best foot forward and join me to #WalkthisMay.
* ukactive research
