“On the Move” Walking Progam
April 30th – July 8th, 2018
Aging & Family Services, in conjunction with WV on the Move, began a walking program in 2005. This program recognizes the sedentary problem facing our community and attempts to help address it. The mobility and isolation issues senior citizens face are even more challenging. Over 400 participants have registered for this program since its inception.
During the program, participants log their steps daily and report them to the senior center or nutrition site on a weekly basis. Steps are converted into miles, and the distance is marked on a predetermined route.
In the past, participants followed their progress on a route northbound US Route 1. This route, a major East Coast highway, is the oldest highway in the United States and runs over 2,000 miles from Key West, Florida north to Fort Kent, Maine. Large maps are placed in the senior centers and allow walkers to view their progress. Sixteen walkers reached the 2,377-mile destination over the past few years.
This year our walkers will trek across US Route 50. Running coast-to-coast through the heart of America on a 3,200-mile odyssey from sea to shining sea, US 50 passes through a dozen different states and four state capitals, as well as the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C. Along the route are some of the country’s most magnificent landscapes: the Sierra Nevada and the Appalachian and the Rocky Mountains, the endless farmlands of the Great Plains, and the desiccated deserts of Utah and Nevada. It follows the footsteps of pioneers and gives a reverse timeline of national development. You can travel back in history from the cutting-edge high tech of contemporary Silicon Valley, across the Wild West frontier of the mid-1800s, and through lands the likes of Daniel Boone and countless others pioneered in the 1700s, before arriving at the Atlantic Ocean near some of the oldest and best-preserved colonial-era landscapes in the United States.
Aging & Family Services began an exclusive “million-step” club as a part of this walking program. Special recognition is given to walkers who have reached one million steps during any of the official walking programs. One million steps are equivalent to 500 miles. We have almost twenty members of this club.
A ten-week walking program is held in the spring, and a six-week program is held each fall. The 2018 10-week spring/summer program begins on April 30th and concludes on July 8th.
Individuals can sign-up at any of the counties senior centers or at our main office located at 875 South Mineral Street in Keyser or download the application and log sheet below.
