Pedestrian transportation

I went for a run this evening. Including warm-up and cool-down, I covered 7 kilometres. That's a bit longer than my usual running loop (6.2k) but nothing too extreme. What made this run different, though, was that it was done for transport instead of pure exercise.

Instead of just running for running's sake, which is fun enough, I had a few errands to run. I needed to pick up a cheque, then to go to the bank to deposit it, and then I had to return home. In a past life I would have driven to run that errand. It would have taken about 25 minutes, and I wouldn't have got any physical benefit in the process. By running to get everything done, I managed to move my body to where it needed to be (transport) and get some solid exercise at the same time.

A few months back I was working in Regina for a few days. At the end of my trip I needed to get to the airport for a flight home. Realizing that I had a few hours to kill before the flight left, I walked from downtown to the airport. Total walking distance: about 4.25k. Total time: about an hour at a leisurely pace. When I got home I mentioned this to my coworkers, who promptly decided I was insane. What kind of a world do we live in where going for a walk for an hour is insanity?

Much of North America is wrapped up in a very rigid mindset regarding transportation. Rather than blindly following the herd, why not walk, run, or bike to your destinations instead of taking a car? You'll feel better about it, and as long as the distance isn't huge, it probably won't take a lot longer. It'll save you the time in the gym, and having a few people think you're insane probably isn't a bad thing.

A goal for 2010

I'm not sure if it was a wise or foolish move or not, but I just committed to a couple of colleagues that I'd log 1000km running in 2010. That's about a 5-6k run every two days. My runs will get logged to Runkeeper and will be accessible at my public user page and in my Twitter stream.

Wish me luck!