What’s the temperature down to just 10° F the other morning, I decided to try out mall walking. It seemed like the quintessential retiree activity on a cold winter morning. A friend was supposed to join me, but he texted me that morning to say that 9:30a was “too early” for him. 🙂

When I arrived at 9:30, the mall was still closed. It was fun to see the shop keepers gradually start to open as it approached 10 o’clock. This mall is the country’s largest with over 500 stores. It takes a full hour at a good clip to walk by every one.

When the mall did open, right at 10 AM, they started belting out the Christmas music on the mall stereo system. The tunes gave everybody a nice upbeat pace to match.

At 57, I did seem to be one of the younger folks out for a walk. That said, while I did pass a fair number of people, there were a few people that passed me too. Some people walk at an amazing pace. In addition to older people, there was also a couple moms pushing strollers.

The mall was in full, festive Christmas spirit by the time I finished at 10:30a. They had Salvation Army bellringers at every door, a forest of silver trees in the mall, and other holiday decorations throughout the concourse.

As I was walking through the mall, I saw a lot of stores that I wanted to stop at – but I stayed focused on my task. I figured that I could shop once I completed the 1-mild loop on each of the mall’s 3 levels.

That said, when I was done, I decided I had enough and headed home without shopping at all. I had completed 8K steps in 63 minutes for 440 ‘active calories’ burned. I resisted the temptation to have a Cinnabon on the way out of the mall.

Maybe next week!

Have you ever tried mall walking as a cold (or hot) weather activity?

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