How To Walk A Marathon Without Realizing It

FABULOUS FEBRUARY Fun February Facts: Feb 18th is Ash Wednesday this year, was the day The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain was published in 1885, Pedro Lascuráin became President of Mexico for 45 minutes in 1913 (the shortest term to date of any person as president of any country), Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto while studying photographs taken in January in 1930, the first Ironman Triathlon competition takes place on the island of Oahu in 1978 (won by Gordon Haller) and is the birthday of Alessandro Volta in 1745, an Italian physicist and inventor of the battery.

Ok, back to walking a marathon...

Next time you go to work, count how many steps you take to from your car to your office/workplace. Let's say it's 50 steps (on average) which, at about the typical 3 foot stride length, is about 150 feet (half a football field). If you work 5 days a week, you walk about 300 feet to and from work each day, equalling 1500 feet each week. Multiply that by 48 weeks (if you take two weeks off for vacation and another two weeks off via random holidays/personal days) and you end up with 72,000 feet which is 13.6 miles, a little more than a half marathon, each year.

If you find a parking space a little further away so that it takes 100 steps to get from car to work, each year you will now walk a marathon without even trying. I've been doing this the last 3 1/2 years after my buddy Bryan from Frontdive Fitness published an article called 100 Steps. Such an easy way to build in a little more activity to our daily lives.

100 steps, the length of a half of a football field, is all it takes to walk a marathon without even realizing it.

Thanks for reading, have a great day!

P.S. A marathon is 26.2 miles. At 5280 feet per mile, that's 138,336 feet. When you divide it up per month, week and day it gets pretty easy to build in a few marathons to your life each year.

P.S.S. It's Ash Wednesday, are you giving anything up for lent this year?