My 10 Mile Walk Home

It started as a challenge and then it turned into a desire to challenge myself.

You see, I’m not your average walker. Sure I do walk-a-thons every now and then, but my walking is limited mostly to walking to the bus stop or to my car and from the bus stop or my parking spot to my destination. But somehow things changed today.

At the start of this month, I entered into a fitness challenge. The challenge was to join with two other friends and complete fitness tasks by the end of the month.  Some of the tasks included walking up a 13 flight staircase, burning 600 calories on aerobic machines, doing chest presses and more. I guess you could say it was a challenge to become more active. And It has worked for the most part. I have allowed the gym to be a part of my life again and frequent it. Just this afternoon during my lunch hour, I took a core strengthening class which involved using free weights and a body bar and though it was intense, my body felt fabulous.

One of the tasks in the challenge was to walk from my job to the Manhattan Bridge together with the other members of my team.  That is when I decided that the day we choose to walk to the bridge, I would walk home.  

I never walked over a bridge before willingly except for the tragic day back in September of 2011 when we had no choice but to.

I wanted to see what it was like without the panic. Today, we completed the task for our team, walking to the Manhattan Bridge and I also completed my goal of walking over the bridge to Brooklyn and home.

If you are a person who normally drives or takes public transportation to and from New York City like I do, you will never realize how close Manhattan and Brooklyn really is by foot.  That was just a small stretch of my walk though. I normally drive down Flatbush Avenue, but never walked the stretch of it. It has been years since I did the three mile walk through Prospect Park, and I was also able to add that back into my life. In just over 10 miles, the challenge I set for myself was completed.

I am a little tired. My knees are mostly feeling it, but I’m good.

 

Besides the walking factor and the cardiovascular workout that the walking gave me, I was also able to see things I had never seen before in both Manhattan and in Brooklyn.  Picture taking never felt better when I could stop to give my aching feet a rest. 

Now that I know I can do it, I won’t hesitate to continue on my fitness journey that I have planted my feet on because it has me so motivated.