Wondering how to stay fit and motivated while you’re waiting for the hiking season to start again? I was wondering the same, and came up with an idea that seems to work for me. Maybe it could work for you too.
I’m trying to retain my trail legs as much as I can in preparation for the finish of my cross-Canada walk, but it was a challenge getting myself out the door every day to go for even a short walk. Winter seems to be a barrier to my motivation, especially when the trails in the nearby mountains are still covered in deep snow.
But once I set the goal of walking every single street on my map of Penticton, British Columbia, I had no problem staying motivated. Every day, I looked forward to marking off the streets I walked with a yellow highlighter. It was fun.
Penticton is a city of 32,000 residents tucked away in the Okanagan Valley between Lake Okanagan to the north and Skaha Lake to the south, and with mountains to the east and west. The distance between the two lakes is six kilometers, and with the city limits expanding up into the hills and part way around the lakes, Penticton is about 42 square kilometers in area.
To make this adventure a little more challenging, I decided to start each day walking directly from my apartment. This meant that I covered some stretches of the city streets multiple times as I expanded my adventure to the further reaches of Penticton civilization.
It took me about six weeks to walk every street in Penticton and the surrounding areas, such as parts of Naramata that were included on the map. I also walked the entire pedestrian and bike trail system in the city, which was a thrill since the Trans-Canada-Trail (aka The Great Trail) passes right through here, almost right past my apartment. I’m not sure how many kilometers I walked in total, but it had to be over 700 kilometers.
The one advantage of walking around Penticton in the winter is that the snow rarely stays long in the valley. After a good snowfall, it seems to stay much longer in the hills, but the streets are often clear in a few days. You might not have that advantage in your own city, but that just makes your winter adventure all the more challenging and fun.
