I have been without a car for much of the past few weeks. I was not comfortable cycling for various reasons, so I pulled out my transit pass and started using the bus. My step count went way up.
This isn’t entirely surprising. I have to walk further than my driveway to get to the bus stop, and connecting buses and final destinations do not always align perfectly with bus stops.
It was rather fun to take the bus; definitely more social, and less pressure on me to navigate to where I was going. And because I’m cheap, I often walked to places that were relatively close because I didn’t want to pay $4.00.
Better health outcomes from using public transit isn’t news. OCTranspo has listed a bunch of studies here. This meta-analysis considered 27 studies, of which 9 reported on absolute measures of physical activity associated with public transport and further 18 papers reported on factors associated with physical activity as part of public transport use. A range of 8–33 additional minutes of walking was identified from this systematic search as being attributable to public transport use.
Of course, good integration of transit modes is what will encourage people to get out of their cars and use public and active transit, so this image from a study by UITP on exactly that issue seems perfect.
Pedestrians use a crosswalk while cyclists on a separated bike path wait for them to cross. There is a tram and another vehicle that may be a bus, and two large bike parking areas full of bikes. In the far background, you can see one car and possibly a truck.
A few weeks back I realized I could not bike to work for a good while. My beloved works from home. I get very anxious on my walk into work.
What can an extrovert who verbally possesses everything to do?
Post your positive self talk on social media! here is an example from Thursday.
Natalie is wearing a blue raincoat with the hood up. Her grey toque with a red and white band pokes out. Her wet brown hair slides down her shoulders.
Honestly, it started back in December posting love notes online during a winter storm while my sweetheart was away for 2 weeks. Then it became a bit of a walking weather report. Then it became the nice words I need to hear to be ok in the morning.
Before the pandemic I’d regularly cry on the walk to work. Sometimes I’d dry heave on my front lawn. I never realized how bad my anxiety was or how much it coloured each day until I got to work from home for a few years.
Going back to the office I stuck to a steady routine, every Wednesday, whether I was needed there or not for 18 months. I needed the practice.
My schedule includes a second day now and I keep working on pairing a self propelled commute with a little pep talk. It really does help.
My friend Yvonne regularly ends our chats with “I love you.” It wraps up our conversations beautifully.
It took me by surprise at first. I grew up in a family culture where “I love you” and hugging were not central to interactions. Turns out I really enjoy those two things quite a bit.
So, I’m glad you are reading this. I love that you care and spend time thinking about fitness and feminism. I think it’s good for both of us. I love you!
July is the month that for me is most seriously summer. June has convocation in it and the end of convocation feels like it marks the end of the academic year. August is when things start up again around the university. I’m planning meetings. Course outlines are due. There are some serious writing deadlines.
Highlights? The big highlight of the month was a combination conference + visiting family trip to Scotland and England with my mother. I love Edinburgh and the British Society for Ethical Theory. I loved walking all over the city together stopping for ice cream comes and eating at the Edinburgh Food Festival. It felt wonderful meeting up with family in Yorkshire and Lancashire. Again, some wonderful walks, time in pubs, and great conversation.
I have reached the end of Phase II of my experiment and I am declaring it a success.
No. I didn’t manage to do a warm up before each walk.
And I didn’t manage to organize my days to make it easier to do a warm up.
Instead, I have successfully discovered that I don’t want to keep trying to make this work.
Yes, success on your own terms really does have a lot going for it.
ANYWAY!
Just like my efforts from the week before, last week’s attempts at trying to warm up before I walked the dog meant that I ended up delaying my walk and stressing the dog out.
This photo is not from this week but I thought it made a funny juxtaposition to me mentioning her being stressed out. Image description: a photo of Khalee, a light brown, medium-sized dog, lying on her belly by our patio doors. She is pointing her snout toward the camera and her tail is toward the door, she looks pretty chilled out.
As a bonus, I also ended up feeling annoyed about the whole thing.
And while it may come as a shock to hear this, annoyed is NOT the feeling I am going for when it comes to taking a walk.
When I had this idea two weeks ago, I was trying to make sure that I got ‘more’ out of my walk. It’s my most consistent form of exercise and I wanted to increase my efforts cardio-wise so I could ensure that I was challenging myself – especially on days when I didn’t have time for other exercises.
It definitely seemed like a good idea and when my first week didn’t work out because of general life chaos (and a few sick days), I reframed the experiment and tried to focus on picking a specific time for my walks so I could include time for my warm-up.
But when that didn’t work out either, I gave it a bit more thought and I realized that trying to intensify things was taking the fun out of my walk.
My walk is usually a relatively relaxing part of my day. I’m not always super keen on having to go out in bad weather and sometimes it’s a challenge to jam it into my day, but once I am actually out there, I never regret it.
I listen to a book or to a podcast or just to the sounds around me and I stroll along with Khalee, taking things in. I usually feel the tension drop out of my shoulders as I amuse myself by watching herself sniffing her way along.
Occasionally it’s a bit dull and it’s usually not much of a physical challenge but maybe that’s asking too much of my daily stroll.
Maybe instead of trying to make my walk more intense I could just decide to enjoy the experience of being outside with Khalee, observing the way things change from day to day and week to week and catching up on podcasts and books.
Last year, I discovered that a single flower grows behind this fence and I was delighted to discover this week that it is a perennial! Image description: a sunny spot behind a fence and between some trees where the ground is crowded with winter-browned grass and a single set of green shoots are growing upwards.
So, it took me two weeks to determine this but it turns out that my experiment wasn’t ‘Does a 5 minute warm-up help me have a more exercise-y walk?’ and it wasn’t ‘How can I make it easier to do a warm-up before I walk?’ it was ‘Will the effort of trying to do a 5 minute warm-up before my walk add something positive to my day?’
And the answer to that is a resounding NO.
Sure, you could look at this revised-revised experiment and say that I didn’t try hard enough or that I didn’t give it enough time or that I didn’t organize it well but all of those conclusions ignore the key finding from this single participant study:
I don’t *actually* want to work on adding a 5 minute warm-up.
What I wanted was to have my walk serve more than one purpose – a walk AND a specific type of exercise.
BUT since trying to add intensity was decreasing enjoyment, I feel totally comfortable in ditching my warm-up plan.
So, instead, I’m going to follow my usual non-plan impulse-related approach for my walks and I will get more cardio in other ways.
I’ll work on being more consistent with my other forms of exercise.
And if consistency gets too hard then I’m just going to keep starting over – I’ve got lots of practice at that.
I was going to start this post by saying that I picked a poor week for an experiment but I don’t think that’s entirely true.
I think I got ahead of myself with my experiment and started at the wrong question. And my hectic week made that very obvious, very quickly.
My experiment had nothing to do with test tubes and beakers (flasks?) of green liquid but this image just struck me funny. Image description: a photo of two people’s hands holding lab glassware that has green liquid in it. They are both wearing white tyvec suits. One person’s hand is holding a beaker (flask?) aloft and they are gesturing to it with their other hand as if to say ‘See what I mean?’ And the other person’s hand is holding a test tube with the same liquid in it near the base of the beaker.
To recap, last week I planned to do a 5 minute warm-up before I took the dog for a walk, just to see if getting my heart rate up before I left would help me work a bit harder on my walk.
I thought it was a good-sized experiment, reasonable and not overly ambitious, so I thought it would be easy.
Then last week looked at my plans and laughed.
My days got incredibly jumbled making it both hard to remember that I was going to warm up first AND making it hard to find the extra five minutes before our walk. (Usually on hectic days I take a walk on the spur of the moment but the warmup plan complicated that.)
Khalee somehow immediately connected my warmup with our walk and either tightly circled around me or jumped on me for the whole time I tried to get moving.
Khalee doesn’t get why I’m making a big deal of all of this. Can’t I just amble along sniffing the ground like a normal person? (Evidence suggests that Khalee thinks she’s people, so she would obviously consider herself a normal person.) image description: a slightly, side-on view of Khalee stretched out on my bed with her head raised (sort of a Sphinx kind of pose) She is looking over to the right rather than directly into the camera.
I was sick for three days and while I could manage a walk on two of those three days, I just couldn’t make myself do a warmup too.
So, yeah, it wasn’t a great week and I didn’t get the information I needed.
Except, I kind of did.
For starters, an experiment that fails is still useful because I know what doesn’t work.
But, also, it showed me that my initial question was wrong – I had started in the wrong spot.
Before I can test if a warmup helps me increase my heart rate during a walk, I need to ask myself “How can I make it easy to do a 5 minute warmup before walking Khalee?”
So, that’s the question I’m testing this week and I think the first thing I’ll try is to pick a specific walk time each day and include a 5 minute window for a warmup.
Tune in next week for another exciting update in the ongoing saga of ‘Christine and the 5 minute warmup.’
*****
By the way, while I tend to default to reframing anyway, this particular reframing was inspired in part by this great post on Instagram from Divergent Coach Kelly who was reminding those of us with ADHD that aiming for consistency might be a source of frustration so we can pick other things to aim for – like getting really good at starting over.
I always enjoy my walks with Khalee but they are usually better for my mental health than my physical health.
I have a tendency to fall into an ambling pace rather than putting much cardio effort in. And that’s fine on days when I need the mental break more that the physical exertion but on busy day when I won’t get a lot of other exercise, it would be swell if my walk did double duty.*
A sunny day photo of my dog Khalee standing on some muddy grass next to the sidewalk. She is a light-brown, medium sized dog and she is pointed away from the camera but she is looking back over her left shoulder because I called out to her. The shadow of my upper body and my hand holding my phone can be seen on the sidewalk.
So, I’ve decided that I am going to try doing a 5 minute warm-up before heading out the door.
My thought here is that by warming up beforehand, I won’t be spending any of my walk warming up. Instead, I’ll be spending my walk already in a good heart rate zone.
And, since I am already in that mental and physical space, I’ll be more likely to stay in exercise mode instead of amble mode.
I’m writing this on Monday afternoon and my wrist spy reports that my heart rate average was a few points higher during our walk than it usually is. And, I felt really good about the extra effort.
One day, one reading, and a subjective report is hardly scientific but it is encouraging enough to tell me to keep trying.
I’m going to do a warmup before every walk for the next week and see how it affects my heart rate and my overall feelings about walking.
Updates as events warrant.
A sunny day photo of one of the sidewalks that Khalee and I travel on during an average walk. There is a road on the left and a line of trees with a little snow underneath on the right. People’s backyard fences are just behind the trees but they aren’t visible in the photo. A blue sky with some fluffy clouds can be seen above.
*This isn’t the first time I have noticed this. I wrote about it in this post about my two-speed dog back in February 2023.
At that point, I came up with a couple of things to try but my focus was more on alleviating boredom than on trying to add more of a cardio element to my walk.
I still do those things sometimes on my walk but that requires me to a) remember b) start a new ‘task.’ And if ai have already slipped into amble mode, I may not have the spare energy to initiate a new task. ADHD strikes again!
As I am writing this on Monday morning, I had already spent about 20 minutes arguing with myself about whether it was safe to take Khalee for a walk today.
You see, last week, things were looking up snow-wise.
The sidewalks were clear.
I could the grass at the edges of my driveway.
My patio had only a few chunks of icy snow on it.
I was looking forward to walking in my sneakers for change.
I knew it wasn’t actually spring but I was hoping things would move in that direction, or that winter would pause for a while.
Readers, it did not.
Between Thursday night and Saturday morning we had around 75cm of snow.
It was not fun.
And I had taken Khalee for a walk on Thursday but it was too stormy on Friday to go out.
On Saturday and Sunday, the roads were only partially clear and there was heavy equipment here and there, and it felt too risky to have my poor pup and poor me try to navigate all of that.
Last night, I saw that a nearby sidewalk has been cleared so I decided that I would take Khalee out this morning no matter what.
But this morning is very windy and a bit rainy and part of my brain tried to put the brakes on.
It really did its best to keep me and Khalee inside, telling me that the wind would make it hard to walk (truth: it’s not *that* windy!) and that while that sidewalk might be clear the road to get there might be hazardous (truth: some parts of the roads are narrow and snow-filled, others are clear and it’s only three minutes from my front door) and…and…and…
However, I couldn’t keep Khalee from another day of sniffvestigations, that didn’t seem fair.
So I bundled up, got her into her hoodie (more for visibility than warmth!), and braved the walk.
Do I feel better for getting outside?
Well, I don’t feel any worse!
Do I feel better for getting Khalee outside?
Oh, definitely!
So at least there’s that.
Here are a few photos from our walk, feel free to gloat about your spring weather in the comments while I am being all self-congratulatory about getting out for a walk today.
PS – We are supposed to have a ridiculous amount of rain overnight. So by the time you read this, all of these streets will be likely filled with slushy water that’s trying to seek out a drain. Sigh.
A photo of my dog Khalee standing on clear pavement, she is facing a snowbank on the opposite side of the road. That snowbank is high enough to obscure a stop sign – there’s only a sliver of the top of the sign visible. Isn’t it weird that there is that much snow on the sides but the road is down to the pavement? Snow makes no sense!My dog, Khalee, in a green hoodie, standing on a snow-covered sidewalk next to a huge snowbank that has been sheared pretty smooth by a plow/snowblower. Not every snowbank is this high, this one is near a corner. Still sucks though.My dog, Khalee, in her green hoodie on her way back home. She’s standing on a snow-covered sidewalk next to a smaller snowbank that is only about 3ft high. The road, which is cleared to the pavement, can be seen on the right side of the photo.
I left my hatphones at home yesterday because I wanted to have a quiet walk instead of my usual podcast/book listening time.
And besides it just felt like a good day for noticing stuff so I decided to lean into that.
I’m not making this into a lesson in mindfulness or anything but as I was walking, I found it fun to make a list of seven things I noticed as I went along.
And maybe it’s related, maybe it’s a coincidence, but yesterday’s walk did feel more like ‘taking a breather’ than other recent walks have felt.
1) What are my feet doing?
Even though I have been consciously working on it, I realized that I was walking more on the inside edge of my foot today.
So, having noticed, I gave a little thought to walking on the ‘four corners’ of my feet like the YouTube yoga instructors say.
My legs enjoyed the change.
2) How am I breathing?
The ‘four corners’ prompt made me think about my breathing – I’m slowly working on breathing into the sides of my ribs as well as the front and back.
I think someone I follow on Instagram refers to that as ‘breathing on four sides’ but there’s a decent chance I extrapolated that description from something else they said. My brain likes making those kind of leaps.
So, having noticed my breathing, I kept checking in with myself throughout my walk. I wasn’t doing it continuously but it felt good to return to it over and over.
3) Do we have time to stop for a pat or two?
Usually, Khalee and I take the business of walking VERY seriously.
Khalee is deciding what to sniff next. Image description: Khalee, a medium-sized dog with light brown fur on top and white fur on her paws, belly, ruff and snout, is standing next to some gritty looking snow on a sidewalk. Her body is pointed away from the camera but she is facing a little to the right.
That doesn’t mean we take ourselves too seriously overall but it does mean that walks are about her getting to sniff everything. Walks are not about exercise, they are not about stopping to chat, they are about Khalee’s sniff opportunities and we only stop for her to, ahem, answer calls of nature.
Yesterday though, because I was really in a noticing frame of mind, and because it was warm enough that I didn’t need to wear gloves, I got Khalee to stop so I could pat her head and scratch behind her ears.
Shockingly, she is as soft and furry and great mid-walk as she is when she is curled up next to me at home. And she was very tolerant of my compliments even though she had to pause her sniff-mission in order to receive them.
4) No gloves and borrowed clothes
I love being able to go for a walk without having to put on gloves or snowpants. I did still wear a hat though…my husband’s hat, in fact. And this is his spare jacket, too. It was a borrow-stuff-from-Steve kind of day, apparently.
Guess who left her glasses on the counter? Yep, it was me! I brought my smirk though. Image description: a selfie I took on the sidewalk not too far from my house. It’s a grey day and there is snow behind me next to the sidewalk. I am wearing a blue winter hat that says ‘Fastsigns. More than fast. More than signs.’ on the folded edge, and I am wearing a dark orange jacket with a hood. I’m a middle-aged white woman with a round face, I’m smirking in the photo but it’s a friendly sort of smirk.
5) Decorations are cheery, even out of season
Lots of people still have Xmas decorations up in their trees, on their lawns, and on their railings and I’m happy about it even though they are technically out of season. I’m sure there are lots of reasons they have been left up but today I decided they were left up for me to enjoy and I felt grateful about it.
I also felt grateful for the few houses that have hearts decorating their windows and I decided that I’ll going to put some heart decorations up in my window too. Even though I live on a cul-de-sac and few people go walking past my house, maybe they will cheer someone up.
6) A lot of people in my neighbourhood have wood stoves or outdoor fire pits
My walk was regularly punctuated by the welcoming smell of wood fires.
Every time I smelled a new one, I sent the people a little wish for good company, good comfort, and good snacks around that fire.
Maybe that’s a weird thing to do but that’s exactly the kind of thing that I do all the time. Probably best to get used to it.
7) I delight in unexpected greenery
Apparently one of the houses on my route – a house I have passed almost daily since last June – has ivy on the side of it.
Okay, it may not be ivy, I’m not up on these things, but the the fact remains that there is a house on my walk that has greenery covering a side wall and I have never noticed before.
I could only snap a quick photo because of the aforementioned sniffing business (the sniffing needs to get done and I do NOT want that task to fall to me!) but look at that wall of greenery! Isn’t that marvellous?
You’ll probably have to zoom in to see clearly, this is a quick iPhone shot. Image description: a photo taken across the street shows a wall of a brick house that is covered in greenery (ivy maybe?) The house is only partially visible behind a snowbank and the photo was taken at an angle that minimizes the possibility for recognizing the location.
I don’t know why I haven’t noticed (or maybe I noticed and forgot?) There’s a dog near this spot that is sometimes off-leash and Khalee gets a little ansty about that. And there’s often someone out front in another house nearby and I often say hi to them. And I guess this spot is shaded by trees in the summer. Could be lots of reasons I haven’t noticed before but I was happy to notice today.
(Also, why is still so green? Is this a vine-based evergreen? Clearly, there is more to discover here!)
ANYWAY!
The long and the short of it was that Sunday’s walk was especially good and I enjoyed myself immensely.
Khalee says that the slightly warmer weather meant that she had some especially good sniffs.
We thought you’d want to know. 😉
For some reason that part of the snow required extra sniffing. Let’s not speculate as to why. Image description: a side view of Khalee’s shoulders, head, and front paws. She’s a medium-sized dog with light-brown and white fur and she is leaning her head forward so she can sniff the snow-covered ground intently.
I started biking year-round in Ottawa last year and fell in love with cycling in a whole new way. I have previously written about it here.
Since then, I did acquire those pogies, coloured lights for my wheels, and a new ski jacket and snow pants which have really helped on the coldest days. I have even been experimenting with ski goggles and a ski helmet for greater warmth.
A bicycle parked in a snowy yard. You can’t see much except orange and green lights on the wheels, white fairy lights along the frame, a red rear light and a white front light that highlights the front basket.
What is less joyful is my actual route to work. Like much of Ottawa’s cycling network, it disappears under mounds of snow and ice pushed off the roads and stored in bike lanes. The same is true of our city’s sidewalks, despite promises to prioritize the people most vulnerable to injury in winter: the elderly, those with disabilities, the people pushing strollers, and the folks who rely on transit, whether by choice or because they can’t afford a car (often single parents, indigenous, people of colour and new immigrants).
In that sense, I’m relatively privileged. I have the flexibility to avoid traveling during peak rush hours, and I am able-bodied and fearless enough to ride a bicycle in traffic, so get to take advantage of the streets that are bare and dry, rather than struggling on icy sidewalks and clambering over windrows left when street ploughs fill in what the sidewalk ploughs just cleared.
If we are serious about addressing climate change, reducing pollution, access to jobs, improving our physical and mental health, and reducing injuries and deaths caused by collisions, we need more access to separated bike lanes. A large study of European cities showed huge increases in bike use when cycling lanes were added.
Sure, we’re not Europe, but take a look at what Montreal has done. The city has been making major investments in bike lanes, and prioritizing them for snow clearance in winter. The result has been massive growth in winter cycling by all sorts of people.
I talk mostly about bike lanes, but pedestrians benefit from many of the things cyclists want – narrower streets, raised crosswalks, safer intersections, improved and accessible public transit, cleared routes, more green spaces and places to rest, have a drink, and enjoy being outdoors.
I can’t fix all those things on my own, but I have discovered a host of allies from Halifax to Victoria, San Diego to Utrecht, who are all working to make cycling and walking safer in their communities. And I have been encouraging colleagues to give cycling a try, at least some of the time – every ride that replaces a car trip helps the environment. There is strength in numbers too, as we are more visible so drivers tend to be more aware.
A mid-January start to #FrostBike season is very late for Ottawa, but maybe – just maybe – my choice of transportation mode will help turn the tide towards cooler temperatures and longer seasons in future, and help make my city a more equitable place to live.
Diane kitted out in a colourful snow jacket, wearing a bike helmet and blue ski goggles. Only her serious mouth and a bit of her nose are visible.
Now I’m feeling less grumpy than when I first drafted this post. It was -23C with the wind chill, and the ski helmet adds considerably to my warmth. It was a great ride especially compared to the snowy conditions going home last night. But honestly? Even a tough ride is better than no ride at all.
Person in a colourful jacket, grey ski helmet, goggles and a black cloth over her face so only her nose is exposed. You can’t see it, but she is smiling.
Last year I started volunteering with Bike Ottawa, a group that advocates for better cycling infrastructure to keep the increasing number of people on bikes safe.
It turns out that when you start thinking about what makes people on bicycles safe, you quickly start thinking about how similar changes can make the lives of pedestrians safer. And that leads to how we design our streets to make them more accessible for people with mobility issues (and other disabilities). and then how all those things connect with public transit (or more to the point, how much better public transit needs to be both in terms of service and in terms of connectivity to bike paths and sidewalks, and providing benches and shade for people waiting).
I have been connecting with all sorts of people who know lots about these issues, and it has been a great year of learning – about how to get around my city more effectively, how much I am capable of on foot or by bike, and how to spot and (occasionally) fix problems. I am now a master of Guerilla construction signage adjustments to clear sidewalks and bike paths.
That culminated this weekend with a lovely walk around anOttawa neighbourhood that has been in the news a lot this year because of big, sometimes expensive, questions about how to use some public spaces.
I biked there, met up with other people I know from various cycling groups plus the guy who now leads an urbanist book club and some complete strangers. We were led on our walk by a woman who walks everywhere – an average of 120 km per week.
We talked about the environment, smart density, desire lines, the importance of consultations with users to ensure designs work (hello Flora Street pedestrian bridge with your incredibly sharp turns and unploughed stairs in winter).
Flora Street Bridge in Ottawa, showing the ramp on left, with cyclists and pedestrians, and stairs on right, with people climbing them or walking by. Image on left is from canadianconsultingengineer.com and the one on the right by Scott Norsworthy.
We are already planning our next walk, ideally to a suburban area to look at the challenges for people who want to get around without a car.
Until then, we will be dreaming of active transportation and urban spaces that look more like this:
Clockwise from top left: Alexandra Bridge in Ottawa, with many pedestrians; a bike lane that goes right through a mall in Singapore; a bike lane in England being used by someone in a wheelchair. She is protected only by flexiposts as large vehicles drive by; the very busy pedestrianized Rue Mont Royal in Montreal.
