This Friday, April 5, is National Walk to Work Day, and with Chicago area weather predicted to be sunny and cool (but not cold), all you'll need is a hat, a bottle of water (but not bottled water), and a plan of how to get from A to B. There are clearly lots of benefits to walking in general, and as my colleague Tim explains in his recent post, there are lots of ways to work walking into your commute, even if the place you work doesn't have the Walk Score of 100 like ours does.
For health reasons alone, even if you drive to work, just parking on the far side of the lot can add a few minutes of walking to your morning and afternoon. The benefits add up. This fitness site estimates that parking 12 spots further away than you normally would translates to a minimum of 19 extra miles of walking per year. Not bad.
Yup, that's on my way home.
The Seafarer, via Flickr
So yes, walk to work this Friday, or part of the way, or to the train, or whatever you can do. You'll feel good, burn some calories, and perhaps reduce your share of carbon emissions. Great.
But in my book, something even better than walking to work is walking home, and it has less to do with the destination than it does with the journey. Here's a few reasons:
- I'm generally in less of a hurry walking home. No meetings, no deadlines, no race to be the first one at the office. I live in Chicago's South Loop, so I'm fortunate enough to walk home down Michigan Avenue. I can literally stop and smell the roses in Grant Park. Or give tourists advice. Or keep an eye on new retail and storefronts. Or look at menus (Brasserie by LM, the Chicago Firehouse, Square One, a new Nepalese place opening soon, and Kroll's... they're all on the way). Or stop at the library to pay fines... unfortunately I do this a fair bit.
- I have no fear of getting sweaty, getting splashed, or being assualted by attack pigeons. That stuff happens, and on the way to work it can ruin your day, while on the way home it's just annoying.
- I work up an appeitite just before dinner, as opposed to before I have to work for several hours.
Think of it as a chance to get some walking in. 12 spots further a day = 19 miles a year!
- I have time to mentally or emotionally process whatever happened at work—good or bad—so that I don't take it home with me. I can strategize tomorrow, stop to write down a note if I need to, and sort through a frustation or two (yeah, you try getting the Illinois Plumbing Code modernized). Unfortunately, the walk home is also when all the witty retorts and things I should have said finally come to mind, just a few hours too late. Ugh.
- Downtown Chicago is beautiful, and after a day in the office or running to meetings, I need that. But so are the
This might be on your way home if you live along the Fox River.
So this Friday I will be celebrating National Walk to And/Or from Work Day, and I hope you'll join me in whatever way you can, wherever you are, for as many linear feet as possible. And if you happen to be walking down Michigan Avenue this Friday evenning, and you see someone smelling flowers in Grant Park and grumbling to himself about plumbing, just know that by the time I get home everything will be alright.
How about you? What's the best part of your work to and/or from work?