126 weeks ago, the first Friday back to work in January 2021, I met a friend to do a walk called the ‘Coquitlam Crunch‘. It was during covid restrictions and socially I was doing absolutely nothing outside my family bubble. But this was an outdoor walk and it seemed like an excellent, and Covid restrictions appropriate, way to meet a friend and do something both physical and social. We both loved the opportunity to connect and so we made plans to do the same walk the following Friday. Eventually we moved to Saturday mornings, and will go Fridays or Sundays if any Saturday doesn’t work. Two and a half years later Dave and I just completed our 100th crunch!

That’s 500 kilometres of walking together. When you consider holidays like my trip to Spain, holidays during the summer, my trips back home to Toronto, and my 6 weeks of injury time this year, we barely missed a single week when it was possible for us to walk. We reminisced today, while having our after Crunch coffee, that there was just one day we arrived at the Crunch and mutually agreed to skip it. Beyond that, we’ve gone out of our way to make it happen.

We’ve gone in snow, rain, and sweltering heat. We’ve started as early as 7am and we’ve walked in evening darkness in the winter. We’ve seen deer, rabbits, and even a black bear, who paid a little too much attention to us for our liking, but went back to eating berries as we increased our distance from him.

100 Crunches wasn’t a goal until we did about 80, and now we’d like to hit 200 (1,000 kilometres) in another 2.5 years… but that’s a long-term goal that isn’t the real focus of our crunches. What really matters to us is the quality time spent together. We get both physical and mental wellness benefits from our weekly visits.

One routine that we unintentionally started was to ‘talk shop’ right away. We’d get our work chat out of the way early. This can be challenging because the hardest part of the Crunch is 437 stairs that come near the start. The best part of this is that by the time we are done the stairs there’s no more talk about work. That’s when we get to drop our guard. We get to share about ourselves, our family, our aspirations, and our insecurities. We get to open up.

And as much as a 5k walk with a 258 metre elevation is a healthy habit, even more healthy is a regular conversation with a true friend. It hasn’t just been good for my personal mental health, it has been good for my soul.

We might be able to achieve the next 100 Crunches in the same amount of time, we might not. The goal is nice, but not necessary. What’s necessary is making time to connect, and to share not just time, but open conversation; To hug and say congratulations on a milestone; To put phones away, distractions away, and be in the presence of a cherished friend… regularly. That’s a goal I’m going to keep.