Every day is leg day in DC

This is my phone's activity log from yesterday. 

(Did you know that iPhones have this step-counting feature? I was delighted when I discovered it! I try not to think about how it figures out how many miles I've gone--does it know how big my "steps" are? Or is it tracking me via GPS?)

Just as comparison, here's random activity log from a day when we were living in Cedar Rapids.

So why the big disparity? Yesterday, I walked 4.4 miles, or 10,479 steps, but on a similar Thursday in October, I walked just 1.2 miles or 2,861 steps. I didn't "go on a walk" yesterday. I wasn't sick on October 26. I didn't suddenly become more righteous in terms of trying to get in my 10,000 steps.

The difference is DC itself--and the way living in an urban area shapes one's life. Rather than driving everywhere, you just walk.

As I already reported in this blog, I drove to DC, so we do have a car. But it spends most of its days here parallel-parked on a street near our apartment. I use it maybe twice a week: to go grocery shopping, and maybe one other time--to get places that are just easier to access by car. Other than that, we walk. Or take public transit.

Walking here is great. Our neighborhood has beautiful tree-lined streets with pretty brick row houses and scattered parks that make walking very pleasant. 

Plus, this is the south! It hasn't been very cold.

Not only that, so many places are just easy to walk to: the Northeast branch of the DC Public Library is just .4 miles away. I probably go there 3-4 times a week: to pick up books, use the printer, or just sit and read. 

The outside and inside of my favorite local library, the NE Branch of DC Public Library.

The Library of Congress is also .4 miles away, for more obscure research materials, and the Folger Shakespeare Library, with its exhibits, theatre, and gift shop, is .2 miles away. Our pharmacy, Grubb Pharmacy, is a mere 600 feet away!

A church that we've attended, Capitol Hill United Methodist Church, which has wonderful worship services, a welcoming congregation, and plenty of outreach (including daily breakfasts for "housed and  unhoused neighbors") and programming is just a short walk away: .4 miles, and there are a half-dozen other churches less than half a mile away (we've visited several!)

So just doing ordinary things--running errands, going to programs, going to the library--you can rack up lots of steps!

And let's say that I decide to take public transit someplace here in DC. Bruce has written about the many DC public transit options on his blog if you're interested in seeing photos of buses, the Metro, and a streetcar, and reading his analysis.  In brief, public transit here is easy and not expensive. I use it frequently. But even if I, say, take a bus downtown for a free concert (I've done that a couple times), or if I had a job I took transit to, I still have to walk .2 miles to the bus stop, then maybe another .2 to the concert at the other end. If I take the Metro (the subway), the station is .5 miles away. So even when taking public transit, I'll still walk 1-2 miles (roundtrip) to get there.

I guess the upshot is that living in a city--which seems like it might be less healthy because of congestion, pollution, no backyards, etc.--is actually better for me in terms of keeping me active and moving. I'm not the only one who's noticed this--there have been actual scientific studies that find the same thing.  (This article by AARP The Magazine has plenty of evidence that using alternatives to cars is not just healthy for people, but also for the economy, the environment and for cities in general, too.)

Every so often I wonder whether I'll continue to walk as much when I get back to Cedar Rapids. But even though we chose our house because it's relatively close to downtown and to Coe, the walks aren't quite as nice--or as short--as they are here. Coe is a little over a mile from our house, 

so not too far, but I usually drive when the weather isn't nice enough to bike. The Cedar Rapids Public Library is 1.9 miles away from our home (a nice bike ride, but a bit of a time-consuming walk) and the pharmacy we use is 1.5 miles away--and has some unpleasant stretches past parking lots and highway entrances. 

Probably I should just enjoy my life in this walkable city now! And maybe some of my new habits will carry over.