Walk Therapy: How To Log Maximum Miles Every Month

There’s no question that walking is good for you. Here’s a trick to make sure you keep moving.

FIT FOR FREE |  Last month, I walked from Vancouver in Canada to Bellingham in Washington and then back to Vancouver again. After that I walked from Vancouver to Hope. I didn’t actually visit either of these lovely towns—I walked the equivalent distance, 316 kilometres (196 miles), in and around my own neck of the woods.

That isn’t that many kilometres when you think about it, a little more than nine (just over six miles for American readers) a day. After an injury to my upper body prevented me from going to the gym last year, I took up walking to keep from turning into mush. To stay motivated, I imagined myself trekking to actual places.

Now that I’ve been over the border, I plan to hoof it to Portland, Oregon, my old hometown, and then carry on to San Francisco. If I continue at my current pace, I should roll into the City by the Bay in less than five months time.

I do most of my walking in the early morning so that it doesn’t eat into my day, and I use the free Breeze app (pictured here) to keep track of the actual distance I cover. I also record my daily perambulations on my desktop calendar so I can see how my weekly walking is going and whether I need to play catch-up in order to maintain a nine-km-per-day pace. —Carolann Rule