How many steps have you walked today?

New Yorkers, on average, walk between 6-10,000 steps per day, which is much higher than most places. For many years, I dragged this average down. When I needed to increase my exercise levels, I started by taking the subway 3 stops instead of 4, and walking that extra 9 blocks. Then I dropped from 3 stops to 2 – but, as all New Yorkers know – taking the subway 2 stops in Manhattan is a waste of time and energy. So I walked the whole way – about 2 miles each way – to work and back. I focused on consistency: 4 miles every weekday.

Then I went on vacation upstate, mentally mapped a 4-mile loop which is about 1 hour 20 minutes of walking. On my first day, I walked 1 hour 20 minutes and hadn’t made it home – I had taken a wrong turn. Now, I would have turned around and retraced my steps but I had lost credibility with my walking partner who took charge and guided us home, where we arrived 4 hours later. When we measured our route on the car’s odometer later, I discovered that the reason I felt like crap was that I had walked 10 miles. I swore I’d never feel that horrible after walking 10 miles again.

When I returned home, I added weekend walks, took the stairs instead of the elevator and, when I got someplace early, I walked around the block instead of pulling out my phone. I got to the point where I was averaging 7 miles a day on weekdays and 10 miles a day on weekends. On a trip to Chicago, I walked 20 miles in one day – in sandals – and was tired but not depleted, and got up the next day to walk 10 more.

Walking made me feel great: besides improving my health, walking improved my creativity (all that blood flow to the brain), confidence (if I could walk 10 miles a day, I could do anything!), and emotional-regulation – which was really essential because I needed a break from ruminating about the horrors of my job. When the job stress started interfering with my walking, I resigned. More time for walking!

I got kinda snobby about walking. About 3 weeks after turning in my building ID, I called my mom and announced I had walked 150 miles that week. Mom’s response: “And you’re still not far enough away from that place, are you?”

And then I read Pedestrianism, and my walking feats didn’t seem as impressive anymore.

Prior to the 20th Century, people walked a lot. Pa Ingalls regularly walked 20 miles to Independence to pick up groceries or buy a new coat, and then home again. Laura and Mary Ingalls got up early to walk to their first school, barefoot, about 3-4 miles and thought nothing of it. Jane Austen’s heroines walk all the time. Children on the Oregon Trail walked across prairies, deserts, and mountains. People just used their feet more.

Pedestrianism starts in 1860, with a couple of guys making a bet about who would win the election that put Lincoln in office. The loser had to walk from their home town, over 450 miles to Washington DC, in 10 days to witness the inauguration. Being an American, the loser lined up sponsors and issued press releases to newspapers in the towns along the way, generating publicity. When he finished, people paid him to do it again.

And thus the sport of Pedestrianism was born. The sport quickly grew from cheering a lone walker traversing an interurban route within a certain amount of time, to a stadium sport. The headline venue was the old Madison Square Garden – coincidentally, now a park that I traversed every day on my way to work, when I was initiating my own walking habits. Groups of athletes would compete against each other by walking laps – for days – around the inside of the garden while crazed soccer-level fans would egg them on from the stands.

The crowds were so passionate about watching this sport that they couldn’t fit into the venue and rioted outside.

For watching men walk.

I don’t really get that. I like walking but I don’t want to watch other people walk. Look: I like driving fast but watching NASCAR is like watching paint dry.

This book was a delight to read, not just because I am a walker – or was until some jerk coughed in my face while I was returning from a walk on March 15, 2020; it was a wet cough, the kind of cough that says, this guy should be quarantined at home, not walking around the streets of New York the night before pandemic lockdown. It was hard to get motivated after that and WFM is death to walking habits, although I am ramping up again now.

Where was I? Oh yes, the book. The book was a delight to read. In addition to learning about a sport that I hadn’t even known existed, it provided historical insights: foot travel as a form of transportation; sports in the late 19th Century. These athletes were superstars, making more in the 1860s than star baseball players made in the 1920s – that’s how big this stuff was.

And then it was over.

A few athletes went back to walking cross-country. They walked as novelty acts at other sporting events. And when they died out, the sport died out with them. Politicians worried aloud that we must not let this sport die out – that Americans would become less healthy if they didn’t have people to inspire them to walk.

Think about that the next time you complain that you couldn’t get a parking spot close to the mall entrance.

Pedestrianism: When Watching People Walk was America’s Favorite Spectator Sport. Give it a read.