Mall walking is a form of exercise involving people walking briskly through the long corridors of shopping malls before the stores open for the day when there are very few other folks about.
This is the time of year when I begin to yearn for spring. It’s one thing to experience snowstorms in November and December when the memory of summer is still fresh in everyone’s minds.
Winter weather somehow feels even colder and snowier when it’s been happening for a couple of months already and can be expected to keep popping up for at least two more of them.
Luckily, Toronto has plenty of malls to walk around in while the temperatures plunge and snow falls outside. There is definitely something to be said for taking advantage of all of that dry, temperature-controlled space until April arrives.
If you haven’t tried mall walking yet this winter, here are three reasons why it might be a good idea to give it a shot.
It’s Scaleable
Walking can be made as easy or as difficult as it needs to be to meet your current fitness goals.
It can be a short, gentle stroll through the mall for someone who is brand new to exercise or just coming back to it after an accident or illness.
A long, brisk power walk might be a good choice for someone who has been exercising for a while and wants to increase their endurance.
I’ve even seen people run up multiple flights of stairs while on walks in order to give their muscles and cardiovascular systems a bigger challenge. Note: I don’t recommend this one on busy days at the mall or other public places!
It’s as Sociable or Solitary as You Prefer
I’m the sort of person who loves walking with a partner or group of people. There’s something about walking and talking that makes both of those things much more appealing to me than they’d be on their own.
The nice thing about walking at a mall is that either of these options is perfectly safe and acceptable.
There are certain places like parks that I don’t feel safe visiting early in the morning and late at night when few other folks are around because I am a short, petite woman. This is even more true during the winter when the sun rises late and sets early.
Malls always have security guards patrolling them, and no matter how early I might show up in the morning I’ve always seen other mall walkers there as well.
I really like being able to get a walk in at the mall by myself or with someone else without needing to think about safety factors like these.
It’s Warm, Dry, and Indoors
Taking an outdoor walk on a warm, spring day in Ontario is a pleasant experience.
In February? Not so much. Our winters can be beautiful, but they’re also generally wet, icy, and freezing cold for months on end.
While I definitely prefer walking outdoors, it is nice to have a place to go during the winter where you can unzip your coat and walk around without slipping on any ice or snow.
Malls have plenty of flat, even surfaces to walk on. The ones I visit are kept very clean and dry, especially if you visit early in the day before the biggest crowds show up.
There are times during winter and early spring when I impatiently wait for the weather to warm up again. I doubt I’ll ever look forward to this part of the year, but I do appreciate having such nice places to move around in while the weather outdoors is cold, icy, snowy, muddy, rainy, and sometimes all of those things at once in a single day!
If you live near a mall, how often do you go there to exercise?
This post is the final instalment of a four-part series I’ve been slowly working on about walking during each season of the year. Click on the links in this sentence to read about the things I love about 
While I mentioned something pretty similar to this in my post about spring hikes, but it bears repeating again for this season. There are always some people walking around in my area, but you definitely see fewer of them on cold days.
The months between April and November are filled with changes in the natural world here in southern Ontario. I revel in every change I see as plants sprout leaves, flowers bloom, or the first trees began to change colours for the season.
A year or two ago, I noticed that the temperatures were a bit cooler one August morning than they’d been that previous week. I decided to set out for a walk before the true heat of the day set in.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about climate change and how the expectations of what winter, or any other season, will be like in the average year are changing.
This is truly bizarre, and I wonder if it will become the new normal for future generations. Will they no longer need heavy winter jackets, gloves, hats, and scarves? How will they react to the thought of a winter that doesn’t thaw out again until March? I suspect they won’t understand that concept at all, except as an academic exercise when they read about what life was like before climate change.
Filling Out Adult Coloring Books. There’s something so meditative about them.
Can you believe it’s November already? It feels like January ended last month, and yet here we are moving quickly into the 2018 holiday season.
My various allergies can sometimes make attending certain functions tricky or even impossible. I’ll often eat before going to certain gatherings to make sure I’m not sitting there with a growling stomach and the inability to eat anything there due to North America’s tendency to toss milk products into so many festive foods.
I’d be especially interested in reading posts about gifts that are inexpensive and not a knick-knack.
If you live in a part of the world where March and the winter season in general isn’t cold, icy, and snowy, this post may not be helpful for you. (Also, I am a little jealous of your tropical or temperate environments at the moment!)
There are certain practical questions that should be asked before deciding whether exercising outdoors is a smart decision in the area where you live.
I spent four years of my childhood in Laramie, Wyoming, so C.S. Lewis’ descriptions of a world where it was always winter actually sounded kind of familiar to me.
From Eowyn Ivey’s 
The Mamutoi were the first band of humans that Ayla, a human girl who was raised by Neanderthals, had ever met.