Mall walking catches on

By CATHERINE MASTERS

The day dawns sunny and bright, a perfect morning for a walk on a white sandy beach.

The glorious weather goes unnoticed by the group of older folk who head straight for the muted fluorescent lights of the Milford mall in their shorts and sneakers.

They mingle for a while at the food hall, which at 8am is only just stirring.

"My doctor said I must walk, it was fate you see," says Becky Murray, 82, when asked what on earth she was doing indoors in her walking gear when it was such a lovely day outside.

"My cholesterol is too high and I'm diabetic," she adds.

Mrs Murray is a Milford Mall Walker, a recent convert to the delights of walking around - and around - the mall.

She saw an advertisement in the local paper and thought "this is for me". For her and the dozen or so other over-50s, and most are well over 50, the mall is a place of safety.

They can exercise without fear of tripping on uneven pavements, of dogs bounding up and knocking them over or children on bicycles suddenly zooming past and scaring them.

"I can do with a broken limb like a hole in the head," says Mrs Murray.

As for walking on Milford Beach, well, sinking into all that sand can be plain hard work when you are in your 80s.

At the mall there are regular places to sit down if the pace gets a bit tiring, there is a regular supply of window shopping, there is plenty of good company and it does not matter if it is cold and wet outside.

And, of course, there are toilets nearby, which is a plus when you reach mall-walking age and which, by all accounts, are quite nice at the Milford mall.

Mall walking in New Zealand has a way to go before it reaches the giddy addiction levels seen in United States and Australian malls.

The Herald could find only a few New Zealand malls that run programmes.

In America many malls have morning walkers, and it is popular with a variety of age groups. Books have even been written about it.

Naturopath Carol Mosedale is a volunteer who runs the Milford mall walkers, which was born out of an idea by Sport North Harbour.

She says she does it to give something back to the community, but she obviously enjoys it. She is full of energy and is the one out front organising and encouraging people.

One of the walkers has Parkinson's disease, another has had a heart attack.

Some come because of hypertension problems, others have high cholesterol and weight problems.

She has seen people transform from struggling to walk a single lap to walking eight laps in an hour.

At the end of Thursday's session, walker Shirley McNamara, 65, was back in the food hall having a Diet Coke.

She had a bit of a sweat up, but said the walk had done her good.

"It gets the blood pumping around the body. Well, that's what we tell ourselves when we get home and crawl into a hot bath."