More than 100 seniors at the Westerville Senior Center walked all the way across Ohio in a year – without ever leaving Westerville.
Soon, another group will be strolling through various parts of the state on an even longer trek.
The Walk Ohio program was the brainchild of Megan Arnold, fitness and wellness program supervisor, and Christopher Shirring, program supervisor.
Walk Ohio began as a way to encourage a healthy, active lifestyle. Organizers calculated it would be 220 miles to walk across the state, then gave participants the chance to figuratively start on the western border of Ohio and walk east.
While all of the walking could be done in Westerville – or, for that matter, anywhere else they might want to visit – each senior could see his or her corresponding virtual location in Ohio from a pin on a map that was moved every time that person added more miles. The goal of walking across Ohio was a way to motivate people to exercise.
But Arnold and Shirring didn’t want to discourage other physical activities by limiting the program to just walking. They wanted to reward any physical activity that might interest participants. The center offers a variety of classes, including line-dancing, water aerobics, group fitness and walking.
Arnold calculated the metabolic equivalents of the various activities so participants could put their other physical activity toward the walking challenge. The seniors kept track of their activity in logbooks and reported it every month, so their pins could be moved the appropriate dis
tance.
“We wanted to reinforce that staying active as an older adult is extremely important,” Shirring says. “The idea of what a senior center is doing is changing. We’re trying to show that it’s not just a place to sit around and quilt. We do a lot of the things that they do at the Community Center, but geared towards seniors.”
The program was a year long, starting in January 2013 and ending at an awards ceremony in January 2014.
“We were hoping for 40 or 50 people, and 150 signed up,” Shirring says. “One hundred and twelve finished. It was overwhelming, certainly.”
Those 112 who finished were rewarded with handmade walking sticks to represent their hike, and Ohio-shaped medallions mounted on the sticks to remind them of the feat they had just accomplished.
“A lot of people still use the walking sticks and bring them on hikes,” Shirring says.
After the Walk Ohio portion was finished, there was a demand for further opportunities. So this past January, Arnold and Shirring started a program that entails walking across the entire U.S. This time, the seniors have one year to walk the 3,003 miles from coast to coast.
This daunting distance turned out to be too much for many people, and participation shrunk accordingly. But a few dedicated seniors are keeping at it, and some have even finished already. The reward for finishing this time is a T-shirt.
The next challenge, Walk Around Ohio, is expected to kick off in 2015, and will be an in-between distance. It will be 898 miles – much more than the 220 across the state, but more achievable than the 3,003 across the nation.
This time, they’ll be walking around Ohio on a portion of the Buckeye Trail, which follows the borders of the state and spans 1,444 miles in all. As with previous incarnations of the program, the seniors will have one year to complete the task. If they’re new to the program and finish, they’ll get their own walking stick and medallion. If they are coming back to the program and finish it, they will receive a new medallion to add to their walking stick.
Participants will also have the opportunity to hike sections of the actual Buckeye Trail at least quarterly in 2015. It’s a mostly unimproved trail, but fairly easy to follow. Arnold and Shirring hope to be able to hit some of the various hot spots on the trails, such as Old Man’s Cave.
Arnold and Shirring are also looking to bring back some of the people who enjoyed the first program. Some people who participated tallied up 80 miles a week through classes. One couple, Roger and Francie Nolan, log almost 300 miles a month.
“Age is what you make of it,” Arnold says. “It’s never too late to start exercising.”
Taylor Woodhouse is a contributing writer. Feedback welcome at gbishop@cityscenemediagroup.com.
