"The Walk"

Last week I decided to start mall walking.  I’d recently gone out with a girlfriend to wander around the mall and chit chat.  By the end of that excursion…maybe about 2 hours worth…my back was stiff and aching, my calves were tight and sore and I had a painful blister on the side of my right foot so was limping.  I felt OLD. 

I’ve had some back problems recently.  I’ve been very careful trying to avoid causing further damage.  I've started to question the wisdom of that after my painful shopping excursion.  Maybe instead of protecting myself so much I should be strengthening myself to heal my back problems.

I’m too young to feel so old after doing so little!! 

I decided walking would be a good way to get my muscles exercising and hopefully strengthen my core so that my back would get better. 


On Monday I went shopping and bought some good New Balance tennis shoes.  I’d tried on other brands and had weird lumps in strange places that I figured would lead to more blisters so went back to my comfy default…New Balance.   JCP had them on sale!

On Tuesday I started mall walking.  I powered thru it pretty good!  Was feeling proud of myself!   Literally patting myself on the leg for doing it on my drive home!  My calves were complaining so I figured that was a good sign. 

I chatted with Ken about my adventures that evening and he suggested getting a pedometer app for my phone so that I could measure my progress, so I started investigating.  I found one called “The Walk” that niggled in the back of my brain for a while, but since it was $4.99 I held back.  It seemed a little expensive for an app.  I'm cheap about some things.

Anyway, I kept doing the mall walk every day.  My calves kept bitching which drove me on because I figured sooner or later they’d stop bitching and that would mean I’d made progress. 

By Friday I realized I was going to get super sick of mall walking if I didn’t come up with some sort of distraction (mall walking is incredibly boring for those who go it alone).  That night I finally decided to splurge and spend the $4.99 for “The Walk” and try it out. 

On Saturday I was there at the mall, with ear plugs and my app ready to go!  


My ear plugs didn’t work.  I was walking around wondering why I wasn’t hearing anything...why it seemed muffled.  Took them out and realized that the reason the sound was muffled was that it was blaring out of my phone and not thru the plugs!  I almost walked into several people trying to solve the problem to no avail.  I finally gave up and held the phone up to my ear to listen while I walked.  That was a struggle for a couple of reasons.  First, the mall was busy and there was a lot of white noise around me.  Second, the characters in “The Walk” have Scottish and model accents, which are a bit hard to understand thru the white noise and the various distractions. 

Here’s background on “The Walk”

A bomb explodes in Inverness station, and you’re given a package that could save the world. To stay alive, you’ll need to walk the length of the UK. The Walk is more than just a great pedometer/step counter — it's a way to turn walking into a journey, a challenge, and a rip-roaring adventure.

During this walk I realized that a single pass around the mall only took me about 15 minutes.  15 whole minutes.  15 minutes that had been making my calves bitch at me for days!  Sigh.  I was an even worse marshmallow than I’d suspected!  I hadn’t realized it was such a quick walk until the app told me…and here I’d been feeling all proud of myself, aside from the older folks who’d been powering past me on their mall walk circuits!  The good news is that my calves finally quit bitching over the weekend. 

I went home Saturday and played with my phone and finally realized that I needed to push the ear plug cord in HARDER for it to work.  <eye roll>  I have experienced a lot of personal shame recently.

Sunday I went for my mall walk with the ear plugs working and I did a double circuit (30 minutes!) and actually understood the story line from “The Walk” because I could hear it!  No complaining calves and no discomfort!  Definitely making progress :)


I restarted episode one since I missed a turn off and wanted to get the sound byte from it and also realized I'd missed some points of interest.  It's more walking so that's fine with me. 

It’s Monday again and I can’t wait to go do my mall walk after work!  How’s that for progress?  “The Walk” is a big part of the reason for that.  Once I could finally focus on the story line I started enjoying it and couldn’t wait to get farther along to open up another dialogue.  I was mentally imagining how funny it would be if I play acted the story out!  Sneaking here and there...running for cover from bombs…ducking bullets!  Part of my enjoyment of the story is the mental image of how others would react if I started running and ducking and sneaking into places in the mall to hide J 

I recommend "The Walk" to all bored walkers out there! 


I'm looking forward to some spring weather so I can take this walk outside and enjoy the fresh air!