The Power of a Good Walk
I walked 146km in 8 days, here’s what I learned
Okay before I get into it, can we just take a moment to appreciate what a ridiculously photo that is?! Obviously I didn’t take it, in fact I can’t believe that it was taken by an actual human being. I just found it on unsplash, all credit goes to a person called Jad Limcaco. Well done Jad.
Anyways, today we’re talking about walking because last week my company did a step challenge and I happen to take these things kind of seriously.
We’ve done a few challenges like this over the years and I always take them really seriously. Usually it’s Move for Movember which goes alongside growing a moustache, but I always try my utmost to win. Why do I try so hard? I dunno, the prize usually isn’t that much, in this case it was a 50 GBP equivalent Amazon voucher, however I ended up walking 146km / 90 miles, and ended up winning!
Yes, I almost walked 3km for every 1 GBP earned. Not really worth it when you put it like that.
But I enjoy walking! I live in Lincoln Park in Chicago and I get to walk down the incredible lakefront trail with the incredible views of the city, there’s a couple of beaches and a free zoo. All within 5km of where I live, pretty cool.
I also like listening to things while I walk. I’ve talked about this before on this blog. I’ve sort of tricked my brain into only listening to podcasts or audiobooks while I’m travelling in some capacity. I can be on a train/plane/taxi/bus, or just plain walking. In fact it’s gotten to the point where it is an if and only if statement now. I’m only listening to stuff when I’m moving and I’m only moving when I’m listening to stuff.
But yeah, I listen to around ~10 hours of podcasts a week on average and try to squeeze in a bit of audiobook reading on the side (of which I aim for 12 books a year!). I tried subscribed to Audible for the summer because I’m walking/running more and I think I’ll run out of podcasts. (I had to really scrape the barrel last week. I actually surprised myself with how many different journalists I listened to talking about the same 4 football transfer rumors…)
And the other thing is, that walking is just super healthy and efficient! I consider it a hack to living in a big city like London, New York or Chicago. I feel like getting from one place to another in London almost always takes 30–90 minutes on the tube. Buses can also be way better at times, but do you know how far you can walk in an hour?! London isn’t actually that big! It feels way bigger because of all the skyscrapers and just the pure volume of people, but it’s kind of weird how seemingly far places can be walked to pretty quickly.
Sidenote: Google maps / Citymapper should understand that I never want to take more than 2 modes of transport in a big city. I will always walk one of the legs, often times 2 legs if you’re going to suggest 3. I want a lever on these apps which says “willingness to walk” because I’d drag it to the far right. Get me where I want to go with one mode of public transport and then walking.
You know what else are great? Electric assisted bikes, but that’s probably a topic for another blog.
See you next week
22st June 2022
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