Walking good way to better health

From April 8 to May 20, Quay County residents took more than 6 million steps toward improving their health.

They participated in the Quay County Health Council’s Step into Spring, an informal six-week competition to find out if some friendly challenges could get more people off couches and into walking shoes.

It seems to have worked. About 30 teams, comprising 134 individuals, took the challenge, according to Brenda Bishop, program director of the Quay County Cooperative Extension Service and chair of the health council’s fitness and nutrition committee.

Full disclosure: I’m on that committee.

The rules were loose. If you walked with or without an electronic fitness device, if you jogged, ran, or rode a bicycle, there were ways to measure your steps, and scoring was self-reported on the honor system.

A little perspective: On average, people cover a mile in about 2,000 steps, according to the website, “10,000 steps per day — The Walking Site.”

That means the 134 participants covered about 3,000 miles, nearly the driving distance between Miami and Seattle.

Proving that age is just a number, three members of the Tucumcari Senior Citizen Center’s team took top individual honors. They were Shari Evans with 1,198,234 steps, Albert Vigil with 1,192,322 steps, and Johnny Contreras with 952,030 steps. Evans and Vigil walked about 600 miles each.

Team performance was scored based on averages.

The top team was the Walking Warriors, whose members averaged 706,056 steps each.

Second place, with 543,362 steps on average, went to the team Just Scapin’ It. Third-place finisher was Team Liberty with an average of 499,461 steps.

Evans credits her job as a traveling custodian for the city of Tucumcari for much of the distance she covered. During the Rawhide Days event May 5 and May 6, she said, she put in 20-hour days.

As a former fitness instructor, she said she also follows her own plan of regular walking, which helps people “lose weight and stay healthy,” she said.

Quay County is beset with health problems related to obesity and heart and lung conditions, and Step into Spring was a great way to launch a corrective process.

I congratulate you, all 134 participants, but urge you to keep up the momentum. It takes about six weeks to ingrain a good routine.

The real rewards are more energy, weight loss, lower blood sugar and blood pressure, and less risk of diabetes, and heart and lung disease.

And as you continue your efforts, I suggest you urge friends to join you. As you should know by now, if you didn’t before, walking is fun, too.

Steve Hansen writes about our life and times from his perspective of a retired Tucumcari journalist. Contact him at:

stevenmhansen

@plateautel.net