Should you really want the answer to that question, you can find out by spending your lunch hour with the members of a noontime walking club that meets on Temple’s Main Campus.

The club was formed as part of the university’s health and safety initiative and meets twice a week, walking a mile each time, said Nina Howze, a health educator working with Temple. On April 29, the group will join in Independence Blue Cross/Blue Shield’s “National Walk @ Lunch Day.”

Temple’s Health and Safety Committee is made up of representatives from various university departments responsible for health and safety issues within their units, said Deborah Hartnett, vice president for Human Resources.

This year, the committee began collaborating with Go Red for Women, an American Heart Association program designed to raise awareness of cardiovascular health and heart disease among women. Six months ago, Go Red started holding brown bag workshops at Temple, Howze said.

“The walking club is an outgrowth of that,” said Howze, who works for Go Red. “There are about eight members of the club and we walk a mile every Monday and Tuesday.”

The ladies started the midday walks for a variety of reasons. For Alberta James, office administrator for Student Health Services, it’s a chance to reconnect with her fitness regimen.

“I was always a walker or runner,” said James, “but I had stopped walking on a consistent basis. This motivated me to get started again.”

Tara Schumacher, an information and referral coordinator for the Graduate School and a former dancer, recognizes a need to work out, but isn’t a fan of the gym. Her noontime walk with the club is a way of extending the daily walk she begins each day on her commute to work. It also allows her to get a needed workout — without it feeling like a workout, she said.

“I have to be tricked into working out,” she admitted. “Dancing used to be my workout, and I liked it because it was fun. I like doing this because it’s fun and it keeps me moving.”

“This is better than walking on a treadmill,” said Gwen Deal, an administrator in the Beasley School of Law who is a race-walker (and thus the pace setter for the group) and a part-time water aerobics instructor for Campus Recreation. “On the treadmill, you’re walking, but you’re not going anywhere.”

But while the physical benefits of walking are great, the chance to meet new people is even more of a draw, said Joyce Neal, an administrative assistant in the Dean’s Office of the College of Education.


“It makes me feel better and I have more energy to do my work,” she said. “But it also gives me a chance to interact with new people.”

National Walk @ Lunch Day will be held Wednesday, April 29. The walk begins at noon at 13th and Berks (next to Founder's Garden) on Main Campus. Registration starts at 11:45 am.