My impaired 79-year-old heart takes me, very slowly, on my first matathon

How to get big gains from no-pain exercise

Run for your life. Or just walk.

Don't kill yourself with exercise

I meet the nicest people when walking.

How to beat the heat and humidity

Oh, those aching muscles!

Black hat best for hiking—unless it's a white hat.

MORNING GLORY. The joy of sunrise walking.

An inspiring Rocky Mountains hiker, 80 years young

The sight of saturated fat

Talk of hiking boots and walking shoes

Doing what comes naturally is naturally the best way to walk

We don’t usually think about how to walk any more than we think about how to breath. We just do it. Even with our first baby steps as infants, we’re just “Doin’ what comes naturally,” as a song says. And doing something that is mechanically extremely complex, using most of our muscles and organs—brain, heart, lungs, eyes and more—in intricate actions that only physiologists understand.


There are exceptions. Military people must learn to march the way the military wants them to march. Infantry grunts are drilled to march 30, 40 or even 50 kilometres, packing heavy loads. Marathon runners give considerable thought to techniques that will help them cover the ground faster. And power walkers, too, must similarly learn the best techniques. Doing what comes naturally isn’t naturally the best way to walk, for the most effective exercise, health, or speed.

Which brings me to my subject. As I tramp into my 80th year, I think I’ve mastered the power walking technique as recommended by former Olympic power walker Mark Felton and others, and modified it just slightly to what seems to give me, at least, the best result.

In fact, I seem to have adopted three different modes of walking during three months of training, so far this year, as I prepare for a 42-kilometre power walking marathon on September 26, and a three-day 90-kilometre hike along for the Victoria Rail Trail from Lindsay to Halliburton October 9 to 11. As noted earlier, on the marathon I’ll be raising money for the Heart and Stroke Foundation, and on the hike I’ll be raising money, for Lindsay’s Ross Memorial Hospital.

Power walking I’ve dubbed the locomotive style. I’ll explain that in a minute. Power walking provides the most vigorous exercise, does the most to improve posture, probably provides the most health benefits, and is the fastest of the three walking styles. But at least for me, it seems best suited to relatively short walks. I probably won’t be able to maintain an all-out power mode for the full 42 kilometres of the marathon. I will likely alternate it with the still brisk but less energetic style I call a military march.

You don’t see soldiers punching the air with bent elbows like power walkers; soldiers swing their arms. A military march, or something remotely like it, seems best suited for long hikes, such as my planned October hike to Haliburton. It seems closest to doing what comes naturally. “You’re swinging your arms freely with just a slight bend to you elbow,” says the Mayo Clinic.[i] “A little pumping with your arms is OK.”

Gorilla-style walking is probably approved by no one, but I sometimes do it for a few minutes as I warm up when starting out, more often as I cool down at the end of a good walk, or if I’m just pooped out and need to slow down for awhile. With muscles relaxed and shoulders slouched, my arms hang straight down, dangling loosely like an ape.

I call power walking the locomotive style because of the arms. My arms don’t swing: they punch. The elbows are bent at 45 degrees, and my hands make short, fast punches, back and forth. As the hands reciprocate like some power-driven mechanical devices they drive the speed of each short step as surely as the reciprocating rods that drive the big wheels of a railway locomotive. The faster the hands and arms go, the faster the feet go. The wheels of a locomotive must turn as fast as the rods that drive them, and the legs must go as fast as the arms that seem to drive them. I find it totally impossible to do anything but keep the speed of my legs in synch with the speed of my arms. I’m sure I’d fall flat on my face if things ever did get out of synch.

Some power walking instructions suggests that the arms should be bent a bit more than 45 degrees with the pumping hands chest high. I find that wastes too much energy. It seems easier, more comfortable, and just as effective to keep the hands at belly-button level. I also have a tendency to tightly close my fists as I pump my hands back and forth—another waste of energy. I have to remind myself to keep a relaxed, open fist, thumb against index and middle fingers.

Now I’m power walking with my arms driving my legs in short, quick steps (much faster than long strides). A few more things kick it into high gear. Head up, eyes forward, not focused on the ground. Stomach and butt squeezed in. Then, with the back straight, I throw the shoulders back, and the pace seems to automatically pick up another notch.

This is the way it works for me.

None of this makes me a fast walker. After some 650-training miles I am still nowhere near fast enough to complete the 42 kilometres of the September 26 marathon in the qualifying time of 6.5 hours. At my age, I’ll likely never be one of the qualifying “fast walkers” for whom the Scotia Bank Toronto Waterfront Marathon is said to be ideal. But at least I’ll be not quite as slow as I would be without—by that time—some six months of training. And perhaps a pair of those costly featherweight walking shoes that power walkers favour will enable me to cover the ground a little faster than in the comfortable hiking boots in which I’ve been training.

At 2 pm on the Sunday afternoon of the marathon, the streets of Toronto on the route will be re-opened for vehicular traffic. Any of the anticipated 20,000 marathoners still running, power walking or limping along will have to get off the road. But unless they roll up the sidewalks, I will still complete the full 42 kilometres as quickly as I can without risking my impaired heart.

And if I can’t walk as fast as real power walkers, at least I’ll look like one.

Not that power walkers are a great sight. As my marathon-running daughter says, “Power walkers do look funny.” As I hurry along with fast tiny steps I fear I must look like an old geezer rushing in urgent need to get to the nearest bathroom.

Never mind. I’m out there doing more than just practicing power walking. I’m also practicing the Keegel. The Keegel, as mentioned in an earlier blog, is the exercise that women do after giving birth to tone up muscles and body shape. For men, the Keegel is said to be a more effective cure than Viagra for erectile dysfunction. The Keegel essentially consists of alternately contracting and relaxing the pelvic muscles. As I power walk with my stomach and butt pulled in tight, I seem to be able to also pull in my pelvic muscles by squeezing just a tiny bit harder. In fact, says the Mayo Clinic, when walking you should “Tuck your pelvis under your torso.” And from time to time I give those pelvic muscles that extra squeeze.

Thus, as I power walk, I like to think that I’m killing two birds with one stone. Which is good, as long as I’m not the old bird.

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[i]  Mayo Clinic Health Solutions. “Walk Your Way to Fitness.” Rochester, Minnesota, 2007.

Search terms: Walking; power walking; hiking; exercise; health; Scotia Bank Toronto Waterfront Marathon; marathons; Lindsay, Ontario; Haliburton, Ontario; Victoria Rail Trail; Mark Fenton; Kegel exercise; Ross Memorial Hospital; Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario.

Castle meals in the age of Ivanhoe

People must have been healthy in the age of Ivanhoe. Life was not poisoned by polluted air and contaminated water, folks walked everywhere and got lots of exercise. Food must have been simple and wholesome before there were trans fats and hydrogenation, and way to much sugar, salt and starch.

But were meals in those glorious castles of 14th-century "Merrie England," in fact healthy at all?

The simple pleasures of a walk

The last stragglers among the deciduous trees in Lindsay were fully dressed in glorious leafs last week, the first week of May. In the sparkling morning sun that followed the rain, my two-hour walk was 720 minutes of simple pleasures.

Our little maple tree and the bed of yellow, purple, salmon and white tulips that encircle it offer the first eye candy from the front door. The tree is four years old and something of a mistake. Lang Court is a one-block cul-de-sac of well-manicured lawns and modest homes, none more than six years old. Four years ago the city planted trees in front of each house that wanted one. We chose a “red maple,” expecting scarlet leafs in spring. The leafs are green, but turn red in the Fall. That was one mistake. It also turns out to be a “soft maple,” sometimes called a Manitoba maple. Soft maple trees grow faster than the hard maples but don’t live as long. Ours will outlast us, however. Soft maples also do not yield maple syrup. Even I am sometimes a bigger sap.

Lang Court is separated from Angeline Street by a grass boulevard, now more yellow than green, with bright-eyed dandelions that grow everywhere in profusion since the treatment of lawns with weed killers was prohibited. Now that they are no longer poisoned by weed killers, are dandelions good to eat in salads or brew for dandelion tea as our early settlers did? Is dandelion wine healthy? Dandelions are said to be loaded with nutrition and vitamins and make a good detoxifier. Would that make dandelion wine a good hair-of-the-dog cure?

It is a half-hour walk to the Victoria Rail Trail, across two small parks and a profusion of street colours: scarlet and green maple trees, pink blossoms of big ornamental cherry trees, lavender lilac bushes, white apple blossoms. Short Roselyn Court is guarded on both sides by flanks of scarlet maples that billow outward and reach 25 or 30 feet toward the sky.

At Victoria Drive I am almost at the railway trail. It is a divided street, with a curbed grass median down the middle. Trains once rumbled down the median where the grass and dandelions now grow.

From Victoria Drive there is a brief, narrow walkway between houses to the first now-paved former railway bed, and perhaps 200 yards beyond that is Victoria Junction, the start of the Victoria Railway line before it was extended along Victoria Drive to downtown Lindsay. A new kiosk, with two illustrated information panels now commendably commemorates Victoria Junction. One side depicts the railway history of Lindsay, once an important junction for five different railroads, whose beds are now trails for walkers, bicyclists, snowmobilers and ATV riders. The other side depicts flora and fauna and the story of Ernest Thompson Seton (1860-1946), a leading wildlife artist, naturalist and a best-selling author of his era, who grew up and began his career in Lindsay. No self-respect resident of Lindsay should miss this kiosk.

From Victoria Junction, the first two of the 90 kilometres on the Victoria Rail Trail to Haliburton are paved. The trees are not as big and showy as those on the streets of Lindsay. There are maples, cedars. birch, pine, choke cherries, a few small, neglected apple trees, probably crab apples, and more.

The trail, too, has its short section of lilac bushes. They tower tall and unkempt over the trail, and if their blooms are a little sparse they are no less splendid. Farther on, lines of maples form an archway. The new leafs are pale and delicate, filtering the sunshine to splash a golden light along the trail.

On my way back, I stop to talk briefly with a senior who has parked his motorized wheelchair beside an apple tree while he photographs close-ups of the blossoms with a single-lens reflex digital camera and a telephoto lens. “People go along the trail and they don’t see a thing,” he tells me.

Right. People like an old geezer practicing his power walking while he trains for a marathon.

“What are you doing?” a younger senior—young than I, at least—asked one day. I explained. “Are you well?” he asked, solicitously. His wife even circled her fingers around her ear in the motion denoting a loco. I certainly wouldn’t be working out this vigorously if I were not well.

On my customary one- to two-hour walks I try to walk at the quickest pace that I can comfortably sustain, with quicker bursts of about 10 minutes. I do sometimes stop for a few seconds to see the things that my friend says everyone misses. I say hello to all the walkers and riders I meet, usually without breaking stride. If I can walk and talk, I’m probably not pushing too hard.

I also say hello to the many dogs out taking their owners for walks. Many dogs ignore my greetings. A few come up, smiling and wagging their tails. I enjoy petting them. It was Joan who taught me to never approach a dog who doesn’t know you. Let the dog come up to you. If you make the approach, that might frighten the dog, and make him unfriendly. Trailer walkers seems to all have friendly dogs. I have yet to meet one that barked, growled or snarled in a threatening manner.

A young lady with a large pup on a leash joins the trail from a rough meadow. I say hello to each. The dog says, “woof,” and starts to bound down the trail. The woman is pulled off her feet, landing on her knees and hands, and breaking her hold on the leash. The dog then sits and looks at her, admiring its neat trick. She is on her feet faster that I can offer assistance. She assures me she is not hurt, and she does not look to be. We both apologize, I for perhaps having caused the dog to behave like a puppy, and she because it was not yet trained. We left on friendly terms.

My final encounter is with four young mothers out for morning runs with their babies. The babies ride in covered tricycle baby carriages, pushed along as the mothers run. As we pass, the mothers are all smiles. And why not?

All walks should offer such pleasures. They usually do.