This story was in our home-town paper today, I think it's a great program!

Walk On: Fitness making great strides
By Sarah Hammond / Wednesday, July 16, 2003

Local News - Making physical activity part your daily routine should be as easy as a walk in the park.

For many, though, exercise is overlooked behind family and work commitments.

Walk On is a new program designed to encourage people get out of the house and become active.

Since May, volunteers have been leading walkers on a variety of two-kilometre routes throughout Kingston.

The program has been so successful since its debut that three routes were recently added, for a total of 10.

Dorothyanne Last, a public health nurse who spearheaded Walk On, said the plan is to create enough routes that everyone in the city can simply step out the front door and hook up with a walk.

"A lot of people have difficulty making time in their day for physical activity," said Last, who works at the Kingston Frontenac Lennox & Addington Health Unit.

Health Canada recommends 30 minutes of exercise, five to seven times a week, Last said.

"It's easy to postpone physical activity, but you end up paying for it," she said.

Last said one of the goals behind Walk On is to ease people into walking longer distances.

Once people feel comfortable with the two-kilometre route, they can hook up with more advanced walking groups, like the King's Town Trekkers and the Rideau Trail group.

Participants should be able to complete the two kilometres in 30 minutes if they're walking briskly.

"People should still be able to talk while they're walking, but they should be going fast enough that they can't sing," Last said.

Gale White, 46, is one of the programs most dedicated volunteers.

A keen walker, White leads three routes each week. She currently walks routes at West Park and Kingscourt and is covering the Queen's University route this month. Next month, she'll lead a Henderson-area walk, one of the three new routes.

White said she volunteers with Walk On for health reasons and because she'd be walking even if she weren't doing the routes.

"It gets me out of the house," she said, adding that she finds walking is an easy way to get exercise.

She walks her routes even in the rain.

"I just pop my umbrella up and away I go," she said.

"On the hot days, I just go a bit slower."

White said she can usually complete the walks in 25 minutes, depending on who's walking with her.

"We walk at the speed most comfortable to the slowest person," she said, adding that she provides faster walkers with a route map so they can move ahead.

There's no pressure and the environment is friendly and relaxed. People of all ages are welcome to take part.

White said mothers and their children or elderly couples often accompany her on the routes. Sometimes she has only one person out with her;

other times there's a group of six or seven.

"It's a really nice way to meet people. You just have to get out the door and do it."

To create Kingston's Walk On program, Last met Daryl Martin, a geographic information specialist at City Hall.

Together they mapped out the circular routes for the program, which mean walkers start and finish at the same place.

The routes aren't on busy roads but they aren't completely isolated either, so that people feel safe walking in the evenings, Last said.

Walk On currently has eight volunteers for the 10 routes. The routes are scheduled at different times and on different days so that people can take advantage of more than one walk if they choose.

Most of the walks are in the evening, but there is one scheduled in the morning.

"We want to see if this time is desirable," Last said.

"A lot of seniors have more energy in the morning, so we wanted to offer that option."