Walk, don't run: Why one of the simplest ways to exercise is making a comeback

If walking was a colour, it'd be the new black.

There's no shortage of evidence that walking is truly a wonder drug; an exercise that can shed weight, increase life spans, reduce the risk of disease, improve heart health, keep joints mobile and benefit mental health.

«You'd have to take a lot of different pills to get all those different effects that you can get from going for a walk,» David Bishop, a professorial research fellow at Victoria University's Institute for Health and Sport, said.

Which is why the UK Royal College of GPs in 2018 recommended that Britons take a brisk 10-minute walk each day.

But above all, the simple act of putting one foot in front of another «just makes you feel good», Suzanne Crane said.

The 59-year-old from Canberra is an outreach ambassador for parkrun.

Parkrun is a weekly, Saturday morning, five-kilometre event for runners held in parks and reserves around Australia and the world.

Despite its name, parkrun estimates between 10 and 15 per cent of participants are walkers. Crane thinks there are some events where that number is as high as 30 per cent.

Crane tried running, but it wasn't for her.

«I was absolutely hopeless at it,» she said.

But then three ACL knee operations sealed the deal.

«I came back to parkrun by walking,» she said.

«When you're injured, you lose that connection with people. But with parkrun, because you can walk it, you're still able to see your friends.»

Four years ago, Crane was thrown another curve ball when she was diagnosed with the auto-immune disease, psoriatic arthritis.

She said the disease could cause considerable pain. And because she's on immunosuppressive drugs, COVID-19 has made mixing with people indoors particularly dangerous.

«It was easy to come back out of COVID and