Now, usually when anyone suggests going for a walk or hike, I’m like a dog who can hear his leash shake two floors away. That hasn’t been the case this summer, a summer underscored by record humidity. In the past week or so, though, with daytime temperatures sometimes not making it out of the 60s, I’ve been all about the passeggiata, and I will be for the next month and a half or so. And so should you.

In the past, I’ve bemoaned the fact that once September rolls around, you really start to notice the sun setting earlier and earlier. Consider the following sunset times for central North Carolina:

• Sept. 4: 7:42 p.m.
• Sept. 15: 7:27 p.m.
• Sept. 30: 7:05 p.m.
• Oct. 15: 6:44 p.m.

And finally, when we go off Daylight Savings Time:

• Nov. 2: 5:22 p.m.

The main reason I’ve bemoaned this rapid advance in the past is that there simply isn’t enough time to get in a decent hike after work, what with the time to get ready and drive to the nearest trailhead. 

There is, however, time to work in a passeggiata, which requires little preparation and starts out your front door. An added benefit, according to Melody Warnick, author of “This is Where You Belong: The Art and Science of Loving the Place You Live” — it will enable you to better get to know your neighborhood and the people in it. Consider these suggestions from Warnick:

• Follow the “1-Mile Solution.” That is, walk everything — shopping, going out to eat, etc. — within a mile of where you live.
• Explore unfamiliar parts of your town without a GPS. Let yourself go and just roam.
• If possible, switch to a walking (or biking) commute.
• Draw a map of your neighborhood and see how many details you can fill in. Not many? See how many you can fill in by walking it regularly.

By walking evenings in your neighborhood you’ll be surprised at what you’ll find. 

‘Explore Your Neighboirhood’

In 2020, I wrote a guidebook called: “Explore Your Neighborhood: A Guide to Discovering the World Immediately Around You.” I wrote it during the pandemic, when we were subject to shelter-in-place guidelines, with the goal of helping readers identify places to explore out their front door. It covers everything from how to use Google Maps to identify potentially interesting places to explore nearby, to what you might see along the way (and what you should avoid), to staying safe, and more.

In short, the book will help you make the most of this two-month window of after-work exploring time that we have. 

Walking after eating has a number of health benefits. In addition to aiding with digestion, it can help regulate your blood sugar, lower your blood pressure, elevate your mood and, of course, burn calories. 

We’re especially motivated by the “elevate your mood” benefit. We all know how we’re affected by our weekend hike. So why not get that benefit throughout the week?

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Resources

“Explore Your Neighborhood,” by Joe Miller. This compact 53-page guide provides the direction and confidence to get you exploring your neighborhood on a gorgeous fall evening. Learn more here.

“This is Where You Belong: The Art and Science of Loving the Place You Live,” Melody Warnick. After moving with her family to Blacksburg, VA, after living in various other locations, Warnick decided to forge a true connection with her new home. She writes about how she made that happen in these nomadic times. Learn more here.

The post Explore Your Neighborhood with a Passeggiata appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

We are in the cusp of a gorgeous weekend, at least here in the Piedmont of North Carolina. A cold front is moving through, dropping temperatures 20 degrees from the past several days. At least through Saturday, that means temperatures only in the low 60s under sunny skies.

So, as we are every Friday, we’re here to encourage you to GetOut! and enjoy. But, as we’ve had to do over the last few weeks, we’ve had to alter that message: Instead of encouraging you to get out and explore the world at large, we’ve had to rein in and encourage you to explore your more immediate world at large.

And not do it with 10 or more people.

And not get within 10 feet of one another.

On the surface, that may seem limiting. But it’s not. Odds are there’s a lot more adventure nearby than you realize. What do we mean by “nearby”? 

The Outdoor Alliance recommends traveling no more than 50 miles. That, they say, is about as far as most of us can go without having to stop for gas, for food, to go to the restroom. 

In fact, the closer to home you can keep your adventure, and more importantly, the farther you can stay away from other people, the better. 

Yesterday, we published a guide on the subject of exploring your nearby environs called, “Explore Your Neighborhood: A guide to discovering the world immediately around you in these shelter-in-place times.” You can learn more about “Explore Your Neighborhood” and buy a copy ($3.45) here. 

A few tips from the guide to help with your shelter-in-place weekend adventures:

• Google Map your neighborhood. Call up your neighborhood, use the Distance tool to determine how far out you’re comfortable walking, see what lies within that zone. 
• Look for streams and other waterways in your neighborhood. They may not have official trails, but they may well have unofficial trails forged by game and people fishing.
• Pick your time of day wisely. If you live in a more populated neighborhood, head out at a time when your neighbors are less likely to be out. Early morning, for instance. Or later in the evening. Or when it’s raining (really!).
• Take time to take in what you’re looking at. You’ve got loads of time, right? Don’t rush yourself.
• Don’t trespass. If an undeveloped tract of land is marked with “No trespassing” signs, or if a greenspace is closed due to the coronavirus, move on.
• Don’t take risks. The last thing you or anyone wants is for you to get injured and have to call in emergency personnel, who have their hands full already.

That said, get outside this weekend and enjoy. You need it.

Explore Your Neighborhood

For help on exploring your own backyard:

Morning Walk with Joe. Join us every weekday morning at 7:30 (and a little later on most weekend mornings) for Morning Walk with Joe on Facebook Live. It’s 10 minutes or so of Joe’s morning walk, no 10 minutes of which are the same. It’s another opportunity to pick up tips on how to make the most of your neighborhood adventures. Catch it here.

“Explore Your Neighborhood.” Again, our 44-page guide helps you make the most of your neighborhood adventures. Learn more and buy a copy ($3.45) here.

The post GetOut! Explore Your Neighborhood this weekend appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

We just got back from a week-long trip and it was killer. We covered 73 miles on foot, averaging 10.4 miles per day. According to my Fitbit, we climbed 369 floors, or about 53 floors a day (for perspective, that’s just a few floors shy of the Bank of America Center in Charlotte). As outdoor adventures go, it was physically challenging: that New York City can really wear you out.

When we decided to spend a week in New York, my main goal (among many) was to visit Central Park. A half mile wide and two-and-a-half miles long, this 843-acre urban park is testament to what good city planning early on can accomplish. According to the Central Park Conservancy, which manages the park, about 38 million people visit the park each year, or, on average, 104,000 people every day. 

When it was conceived in the 1840s, Central Park was seen as a way for New Yorkers to escape the crush of urban life. One of the key features of the Greensward Plan eventually chosen for the park was that it effectively shielded park-goers from the city that lay beyond its borders. (Ironically, this massive clearing is now one of the best spots to view the towering midtown Manhattan skyline.)

But, as I quickly discovered, it’s not just Central Park. That early success spawned a commitment to parks and their restorative powers: today, New York City has more than 1,700 parks across its five boroughs. In Manhattan, it seems, you can’t walk more than three blocks without hitting a park. Some are small pocket parks only big enough for a playground. Some are big enough to accommodate a game of touch football or Frisbee. In Central Park, you can train for a marathon. We wound up plotting our routes between main attractions — the New York Public Library, Grand Central Station, Greenwich Village, among others — by how many parks we could walk through along the way. 

What helped us rack up our miles was being able to go carless. Every morning I walked a mile through our Brooklyn neighborhood to get coffee at a Russian market, then meander my way back. New York’s incredible public transit system took us close to everywhere we wanted to go: take a train to downtown Manhattan, walk five or six miles, take the train back. 

And those 53 floors a day? Mostly from descending or ascending to catch a train. (And extra credit on our travel days, when we had about 60 pounds of luggage in tow.) Those trains and the buses, especially at rush hour, provide one of the best core workouts imaginable: you’re standing, the train is swaying and bucking at 30 mph — you better believe your core gets a workout. And, when our New York City days came to an end, we were rewarded with the best night’s sleep you can imagine.

When we returned in today’s wee hours after our 7-day NYC adventure I was spent. And I was glad to have a looming weekend to recover: just 21 miles backpacking the coast’s Neusiok Trail — with nary a stair or a hill in sight.

The post NYC: One Rewarding Adventure appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

Jim Emmons was happy to talk about his 30,000-step-a-day habit, under one condition: the interview had to be in motion.

Yes, Emmons confirmed as we walked the Durham campus of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina where he’s Vice President of Corporate Planning, he does average 30,000 steps a day—three times the daily recommendation and twice the much-discussed increase recently suggested by a study of Scottish mailmen. As proof, he produced his iPhone and called up his Fitbit app, which confirmed the impressive stat. It also showed that for this day, he was at 30,684 steps. It was 3:14 in the afternoon.

How does someone rack up 30,000 steps by mid-afternoon?

“Normally, I get up between 4:15 and 4:30 and ride the recumbent bike for 75 to 90 minutes,” he said. “That’s 9 to 10,000 steps.”

Emmons cleans up, then takes the dog for a 35- to 40-minute walk. By the time he gets to the office at 7:15 a.m., he’s already in the 15,000-step neighborhood.

Impressive. But not nearly as impressive as how he manages to log the second 15,000 steps with a desk job.

“I do walking meetings,” says Emmons, who turned 60 in December.

Mostly, these are in the form of mentoring meetings, and meetings about workplace relationships.

“It gives the people I’m talking with a chance to get out, to stretch their legs.”

Unless the weather is especially bad, Emmons walks to all his meetings on BCBSNC’s 62-acre Durham campus. He can tell you how many steps it is from his building, No. 700, to, say, the cafeteria (400) or to Building 100 (1,000). Of course, he typically takes a more circuitous route.

“I’ll sometimes walk through this building,” he says pointing to a three-story structure somewhat near the cafeteria, “which has open seating. It gives me a chance to talk with people I need to catch up with. It’s also good for visibility.” Think of the mythical upper management types you may have worked for over the years: heard from, but rarely seen.

Emmons never takes the elevator, never forces anyone to walk who doesn’t want to, and never does an outdoor walking meeting after 10 a.m. in the summer.

“It’s a great way to get energized,” he says of his near-constant motion.

The word “anal” surfaces more than once during our 3,320-step conversation. Particularly when discussing:

• The fact that Emmons has only once logged fewer than 20,000 steps in a day in the last four years (on an especially challenging travel day).
• That he walks at four different paces:  treadmill/bike pace (1,350 steps every 10 minutes), normal pace — the brisk pace we keep on this interview (1,200 steps), the stop-and-sniff pace he walks with his dog (1,000 steps), and strolling, the pace he walks with his wife (slightly under 1,000 steps).
• That he has daily goals within goals. “Weekdays, my goal is 25,000 steps, my threshold is 20,000, my stretch is 30,000. Weekends, my goal is 30,000, my threshold 25,000, my stretch 35,000.”
• That his one-day record is 76,000 steps, during which he pretty much walked-and-worked all day as a promotion for the Susan G. Komen foundation.
• That his goal for the next Komen event is 80,000 steps.
• That his ultimate daily goal is 100,000 steps.

Emmons is motivated by the desire for a long, healthy life. Though his father lived to be 90, Emmons says he was in poor health in his later years. He’s determined not to follow suit, and has been on the never-slowing path to good health for at least 20 years.

Does Emmons consider himself competitive?

“Yes,” he’s quick to answer. He’s also quick to clarify. He mentions the daily challenge he has with his family Fitbit “Friends” group.

“I’m competitive with my goal,” he says, “not with my family. I think a better way to handle that is to compete by percentage of goal met.”

Anyone in a step competition with Jim Emmons would likely agree.

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Learn more by clicking …

• Should 15,000 Steps a Day Be Our New Exercise Target?
• Find more on Susan G. Komen here

The post 10,000 steps a day? Try 30,000 appeared first on GetGoing NC!.

Just when you thought you were virtuous getting in your prescribed 10,000 steps a day, a study out of Scotland suggests that 10,000 may not be enough. You may need to goose that number by 50 percent.

15,000, suggests the study of 111 Scottish postal workers, may be the new health standard.

You can get up to speed with the history of 10,000 steps and details on the University of Warwick study in an article posted yesterday in the New York Times’ Well blog (see link below). The immediate question likely on your mind: How on Earth can I log 15,000 steps a day? That’s roughly 7 miles, fyi.

Dr. William Tigbe, the physician and public health researcher who led the study, told Well that logging 15,000 steps would require walking briskly for two hours at about a 4-mile-per-hour pace.

“It takes effort,” he notes.

Let’s start with those two hours a day. If you’re sleeping properly (8 hours) and have a full time job (another 8 hours), that leaves 8 hours of … free time? Free, provided you don’t have kids, don’t have errands to run, chores to do … don’t need to eat.

Two hours a day to walk? In a perfect world, perhaps.

And that’s if you can maintain a 4 mph pace. In most hiking circles, 3 mph is considered brisk. If you’re hiking at 4 mph, odds are you aren’t the person who will benefit most from a daily step regimen — you’re already there.

Personally, my Fitbit is set to go Fourth of July at 15,000 steps. I’ve met that goal for an entire week once; I feel good if I make it five days out of seven. And walking is a large part of how I make a living.

The beauty of 10,000 steps is that nearly anyone who is ambulatory can do it. All the little things health types tell you to do — park at the far end of the parking lot, take the stairs, take a 10-minute clear-your-head walk two or three times a day, go for a walk when talking on the phone — will add up to get you to 10,000 steps. I find that reaching 15,000 steps a day is near impossible without incorporating a dedicated workout of some kind, a walking workout of at least 45 minutes.

And remember, the daily step goal is meant to be met every day. Hiking 20,000 steps on a Saturday doesn’t grant absolution from 10,000 steps on Sunday. The goal is to move consistently. If you’re consistently hitting 10,000 steps a day, you’re making that happen. And hopefully, you’re feeling pretty good about it.

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Read more about the University of Warwick study in the New York Times’ Well blog story, “Should 15,000 Steps a Day Be Our New Exercise Target?”

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