Mall Walking
 

It's official. I am now an middle-aged midwesterner. Today I went walking in the mall for exercise. I'm going to change my name to Shirley, get a tight perm and strap on an enormous fanny pack and my assimilation will be complete.

My friend and I have a regular walking date twice a week, but at -19ºC this morning, an outside walk was just not going to happen, so off we went to the mall to give mall-walking a try. The stores were still all closed, although Arby's had a sign up promising to open at 9 with special offers for mall walkers on "fried potatoe". There were a lot of people there. All going in the same direction. We decided not to rebel and joined them. There seems to be a set course, going up and down all the little offshoot hallways and round the outside of all the trash cans and signs. We could feel rays of disapproval as we cut corners to overtake slowpokes without breaking our stride. Some walkers were so anal about following the course, they would go right into the corner and then almost stop and turn an abrupt 90 just as I thought they were going to smack into the wall for my entertainment.

There was a huge group of seniors at one end doing an organized workout. They started in chairs, but as we were finishing they were doing some pretty enthusisatic dancercize, and us walkers had to wait in line and take it in turn to dart past one gentleman as his flailing arems were at the far point of their motion. Three fast or one slow person could get through per flail, he was grinning like a nutter, completely oblivious to our peril.

And then there were the scary moms with strollers doing a vigorous program at the other end of the mall. Mom in charge must've been thrown out of the army for getting knocked up. The strollers were like mini SUVs and the moms were all about 12 years old. Scary.

But we were able to walk at a good pace without fear of slipping on the ice or getting frostbite, so it was a good workout. Scenery not so awesone -usually we walk in parks and nature preserves.....

Ho hum, needs must....

no particular point to this post, just thought I'd share my new experience and pat myself on the back for exercising. :D

Am I the only dwellar to have succumbed to such suburban pursuits, or are you all secret or out-and-proud mall-walkers?

Let's go to the mall. Today.

(From How I Met Your Mother, when it gets out that Robin was a Canadian Teenage Mall Pop Star.)

I'll admit I shed the best part of a stone by going to Bluewater every weekend it was raining (and the park every weekend it wasn't). As far as I was aware, I was the only one doing it though. There may be the sort of organisation you have described now, but back then most people I admitted it to thought I was crazy.

I used to take a packed lunch and treat myself to something healthy from M&S to finish it off (fruit salad, jelly etc). I'd be there for the best part of three hours and tried not to stop moving in that time. I included stairs and walking on escaltors for variety.

There just isn't anywhere in free travelling distance (ie walking!) for me to do this now. I walk round the park instead, but get discouraged when it's raining. It's nowhere near as attractive as the London parks, bring just a rectangle of grass in effect. Ah well, Mum and I start out Fat Loss Challenge next week. Once I get the chance to lord it over a 63 year old woman there'll be no stopping me.

PS - fanny pack :lol:

I've done the mall-walk, especially in bad weather. It's so-so. It usually happens when you went to the mall for another purpose, and ended up saying, I could get in another 4k steps if I did a couple of laps...

I have done lots of unintentional mall walks, where my wife's birthday is coming up and I have no idea what to get her. I just wander around for a couple hours and end up getting her some candles or something.

I wonder, what were the stores she missed?

Radioshack and Spencer's.

And Sports Authority or something similar.

the tobacco shop and/or knife store.

I'd try mallwalking, but it happens to early in the morning, and if I go at a time that's better for my schedule, shopping keeps interfering with exercising (unless I pretend that my whole trip consists of a lot of warm up and cool down strung together).

Dead Mall Walking.

GAP.

do all malls in America look the same, then?

Yes. They are as homogeneous as Starbucks.

So, this is like a common thing then?

I suspect one of the reasons that may not take off big here is that, other than than the metropolitan areas, our malls aren't really large and interesting enough, on the whole.

It's smaller than the old Arndale in Manchester, and only one storey. But yes, i'd say there were easily 150 walkers and 100 exercisers.

Plus Dana you guys don't have the room to build one, well at least you are smart enough not to give up that much room of prime property to build one.

Malls in the UK are a surprising size, Merc, but usually on several floors.

I guess that's what I mean really. There doesn't seem to be a lot of floorspace, most of the time you're on escalators:P


Smaller than the old Arndale? God. Can't imagine people flocking to the Arndale for their daily exercise lol!

See, now I just automatically assumed thatthe Merkins wuold have bigger malls :)

They maybe do, just not in Ann Arbor. Apparently a full circuit -including up and down all the alleys- is just under a mile.

I've done Bluewater as a shopper/ walker and as a shopper Milton Keynes, Meadowhall and the daddy of them all, the Metro Centre.

But the real biggies are few and far between I admit.

Mum & Dad were so impressed by the malls in Las Vegas. Or Hollywood, the pictures got a bit mixed up in my head after a while. They went every day to one that had a faux thunderstorm - with rain! not all that amazing for Brits, used to shopping in the rain. Not to shop, just to enjoy the spectacle. Also, mall walking would really suit my Dad, as following his knee replacement he is nowhere near as spritely. This is a man who used to run marathons. Cause and effect maybe - his former running partner had both replaced.

Read and learn, LabRat! Then again, being a slip of a thing you probably don't put the same pressure on as a 13 stone man.

King of Prussia (pdf directory) is the big mall in our area. It's 2 buildings; 1 is 2 levels the, the other is 3. There are quite a few redundant stores although I noticed this year a few have closed.
My sister and I go at least once together to do our xmas shopping every year... this year with 1 year old babies in backpacks. Talk about exercise...

Even I have heard of the King of Prussia Mall. Mostly because it has its own exit. It's a landmark when heading North.

One of the biggies around here is Tysons Corner. There are actually 2 malls next to each other there. The big commoners mall, and the smaller rich people mall.

This is a map of the commoners mall. It's 2 floors.

Thinking ... own exit? Not really. Of course I never take toll roads to get to it, but I thought that exit was still considered Valley Forge ...

King of Prussia is the largest naturally occurring mall in the United States. The Mall of America does have more square footage, but they had to cheat by including things like a full-scale amusement park.

How can something like a mall be "naturally occurring," you ask? By starting as a much smaller, outdoor retail space, really a bunch of strip centers pasted together, and over the years expanding and expanding and enclosing some of the outdoor bits. Frankly, I don't recognize most of the mall complex these days, do love the crystal palace Bloomingdales' entrance, and miss some of the labyrinthine elements of the old Plaza building, that got straightened out in the last reconstruction. Remember having to go back and around and under to get to that Viking Hut store, or whatever it was that had the Scandanavian Doo-Dads? I also miss the Conrans.

Holy guacamole!
Now that's a Mall worth visiting!

Actually, I have a feeling my bro and SIL made a stop-off there one year. She takes an empty suitcase on holiday just to fill with shopping. Good luck to her - she earns the money so why not.

The trick is to shop and then buy a new suitcase.

Nah, she has enough by now.
She just puts her normal suitcace inside a larger one on the way out.

The Metrocentre mall in/near Newcastle has an amusement park in it. Supposedly the biggest mall/shopping center in Europe.

Lawrence doesn't have a mall, so folks are stuck doing laps at the Super Target.