Are you up for the challenge? Welcome to Walking is Fitness. This is a podcast of action

providing a little extra motivation to help you keep that fitness promise you made to yourself.

Hi, I'm Dave. I started walking for fitness in 2013. Still take an intentional fitness walk every single day.

I'm walking right now, and I would love to have you join me for the next 10 minutes.

Not long ago saw this post in the Start Today Facebook group.

Her name is Carol.

Today was an extremely challenging walk.

Started out in a heavy rain. I hate,

capitalized here, hate the rain. Then it was dodging puddles and worms. It seemed like the worms,

geese, and some deer were the only thing out except for me. You ever felt that way? Have you ever encountered, as Carol

put it, an extremely challenging walk? Maybe like for Carol, it's weather that makes it extremely

challenging for you. But my most extremely challenging walk had nothing to do with weather.

It was almost six years ago. I was on a business trip in California, lived in Maryland at the time.

I was attending a conference, and I had a hard goal, and I don't mean that in terms of difficult. I mean this was my

set goal for every day of 20,000 steps. And I knew that this particular day was going to be

very challenging. Again, not because of the weather. In fact, I was rarely going to be out in the

weather. This was a travel day. In fact, I was rarely going to be out in the weather.

This was a travel day. And any time you travel from west to east, particularly California to Maryland, you lose three hours. So my day was going to be three hours shorter than usual.

And most of that time was going to be spent on an airplane,

or three airplanes, in fact.

First flight was from California.

It was Los Angeles area, Anaheim, actually.

...