6
By Frank Greally
On the cusp of a New Year, one year more and one year less, as our postman Jimmy Byrne reminded me one day long ago back in Mayo, it’s a good time to make a plan to lace up my walking shoes and stride with renewed energy into 2025, embracing the joys and the challenges that the year may bring.
I was a young lad back in Ballyhaunis eagerly trying to make an impact as a distance runner when I met our postman on the road after I had just finished my training run that day.
“Another day’s training done, Jimmy,” I gasped, hands on knees and sweat almost blinding me. I can still see my near neighbour’s kindly face breaking into a gentle smile.
“It’s another day for both of us, Frank – one day more and one day less.”
I felt I needed to write the above lines as something of a mantra to myself at year’s end – a prompter that just might be enough to steer me back on the road to better fitness in 2025.
To be honest, I have over the past several months neglected my general physical condition. I could conjure any number of excuses, and I might even believe a few of them to be true.
Reading my late great friend Dr George Sheehan, I can relate particularly to one paragraph from his book Personal Best. George wrote: “Anything we take out of our lives was there for a reason; we remove it at our peril.
“Exercise, on the other hand, is something we add to our lives- something that should have been there in the first place. The result- unlike the result of dieting or giving up cigarettes – is equally simple. We are more than we were, not less. And we are naturally better – better in fitness, better in health.”
When I review the year now almost gone, I could easily blame a busy work schedule and other deadlines, but in truth I feel I have over many months slipped back into a denial zone whereby I have kept up with as many appointments and work responsibilities as possible while denying myself the most important thing of all – a daily walk, a one-hour appointment with myself.
Around this time two years ago I decided to make my walk the hub of my day; I never missed a day of purposeful walking for the first six months of that year and I only missed the odd day here and there during the second half of that same year.
Four years ago I set myself a target to walk from my hometown of Ballyhaunis to the site of the Old Coombe Hospital in Dublin where I was born prematurely on June 1st, 1951. I was not expected to make the journey back to Ballyhaunis with my mother and so they christened me with the name Francis in the nearby church on Francis Street.
That plan to walk from Ballyhaunis to Dublin over a 12-day period gave me a great sense of purpose and challenge. Frank Fahey from FitWalk Ireland joined me for the whole journey and numerous friends came on board to walk sections of the route that was mainly along canal banks.
I think it’s this kind of walking challenge that will now get me back to a regular walking routine during 2025 and I’d like to encourage readers of The Gazette to consider setting personal walking goals over the next several months.
It’s easy to slip out of a routine that’s good for you and at year’s end I have to admit to myself that I have neglected the one thing that needs to be central to my wellbeing, both physical and mental. That one thing is my daily walk.
I’m sure that I am not alone in having neglected my daily walk routine during 2024. I had not abandoned walking, but what I had neglected was the consistency of my daily walk.
“The repetitive steady rhythm of putting one foot in front of the other, connecting to the earth below and to our own selves, can be a restorative, healing process, writes Danielle North in her book Walking Meditations.
“Even a short ten-minute walk or ‘scene changer’ can often be enough to break your state, helping to restore balance and regulate your central nervous system.”
I’m inviting readers of The Gazette to join me on my Walking With Gratitude Crusade during 2025.
I will be writing a weekly Walking with Gratitude column over the next few months and I’d like to encourage readers to tell me how regular walking has enhanced their life. I’d like suggestions too for good locations for walks and personal walking achievement stories.
I’ll leave the last words this week to another quote from Walking Meditations by Danielle North.
“Be creative, stretch your imagination, and let yourself hear the sounds of the world you inhabit.
Contact me at: [email protected]
PHOTO – Frank Greally warming up for New Year’s Walking With Gratitude challenge.
