Today's 10-minute walk is helping you keep your fitness promise, which has another link to your growing fitness chain.

As I'm walking, it's dark. Have you ever walked when it's dark? I don't mean at night after the sun has set, but in the morning before the sun has risen.

There's something about it that is, for me, almost magical.

And you probably, if you've paid attention, probably notice that quite a few of these

walks that we take together as I'm walking,

it's before sunrise, maybe there's some early daylight off to the east, but these walks tend to be really early.

There's something about knowing, I don't know what it is, there's something about knowing that I'm awake and I have begun my day

before most people have even opened their eyes. When I did the morning show for many years,

I would leave the house oftentimes around 3, 3.30 in the morning. And it was that same feeling of heading into work, and I'm the only one awake,

which, of course, I was not, because once I hit the Baltimore Beltway, I was reminded that there

are others awake, not like there was heavy traffic, but there were other cars on the road,

and some of them moving very, very fast.

In the 19th century, Charles Dickens was the most famous writer on the planet.

He's still famous, not the most famous in the world, but still famous, and you've probably heard of some of his books,

Great Expectations, Tale of Two Cities, and maybe his most beloved Christmas Carol,

Ebenezer Scrooge, The Three Ghosts. Charles Dickens loved walking. It is said that he walked 12 miles a day. He wrote about it from time to time, this walking, this passion for walking that he had. And in one of his books, he mentions the different styles of walking. There's walking just to kind of amble along when he would

dream and think and be inspired. There was the walking where he was looking, observing what was

happening around him. And then there was the walking with a purpose. We're getting from point A to point B.

And it is said that when Dickens was at least moving with a purpose,

he was moving rather quickly.

He was going almost five miles an hour,

which is, as experts say, at the upper end of walking speed.

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