JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Science offers lots of evidence that regular exercise can affect how long and how well we live. But that exercise doesn't always have to mean spending a lot of money or buying special equipment. How about taking a walk?
ANITA SNYDER: There's always somebody in here walking.
SUMMERS: As part of our series about being active as you age, we headed to a mall in Annapolis, Maryland. We were there to meet three women who show up for fitness and for each other.
SNYDER: We went all down around here, and then we'll go down to the food court and come back and go out that door - every day, 8 o'clock.
SNYDER: That's Anita Snyder. She's 81. We met her as she and two friends were about halfway through their daily route, looping past a row of massage chairs. Research suggests that regular walking may help older adults live longer, and this group of women is committed. Anita, for example - she's been coming to this mall to walk for 20 years.
SNYDER: Just taking another step, one after the other.
SUMMERS: It's pretty empty this early in the morning. The mall belongs to the walkers. We spot a woman who looks to be in her 40s or 50s power walking with small, yellow dumbbells in her hands. Anita Snyder points out an older, white-haired man she knows walking with his grandson. Five days a week, Anita walks with two friends, Evelyn Bock and Annette Smith, both in their late 70s.
SNYDER: You know, knowing that we have people here waiting for us gets us here. I don't always want to get up and walk, but I got these two ladies waiting for me. So it gets me here.
SUMMERS: Do you guys have, like, a big text thread, or are you just texting one on one, or is it a group text?
SNYDER: Just text - we're a group text, a group of three.
SUMMERS: There used to be a lot more walkers at this mall. Then COVID hit, and not everybody came back.
SNYDER: We try to keep in touch with everybody. When we don't see them and then we do see them, we always ask them if they were OK or maybe they went away.
SUMMERS: At the end of their route, we pull up a few chairs at one of the mall's restaurants to chat. I started by asking Evelyn Bock how she got started.
EVELYN BOCK: I was walking - well, they've been walking for a while. They already knew each other. And I was walking by myself. And they said, come and walk with us. And so I did. And then we started walking together.
SUMMERS: Evelyn works at a small, local gun shop. It's about 30 minutes away, but she still makes the time to drive over to the mall before work.
BOCK: You get up, and you get ready, and you go. If it's bad weather or something's going on that you can't make it, it feels like something's missing in your day sometimes just because you're always here.
SUMMERS: While these days, Anita, Annette and Evelyn rely on their text chain to coordinate their walks, back when they started walking, things were more structured. Mall walkers even wore shirts and badges, and there was formal programming.
ANNETTE SMITH: The hospital would come over here and give everybody pedometers and information about healthy living and walking.
SNYDER: How beneficial what we were doing was...
SMITH: Yeah.
SNYDER: ...That it was good for our bodies to keep them moving and make everything work. And then, actually, I remember we used to sit down in the food court, and they would bring people in to talk to us about your feet, your body, you know, your brain and how the walking affects all of these things. And...
SUMMERS: Do you feel like you've seen those kind of benefits in your lives, or do you feel like you've seen benefits to your health from coming out here and walking every day?
SNYDER: Oh, I do. Yeah.
SUMMERS: Like what?
SMITH: You know yourself if you don't have to get up, you just lay in that bed. But I see a benefit. Nine years ago, I had quadruple heart bypass, and I'm here.
SUMMERS: Annette sees a benefit to walking, and research backs her up. A recent study found that women who took about 4,000 steps a day reduced their risk of premature death. There are physical benefits but also psychological. These women have found community. There's that group text that they mentioned but also cards sent when someone's ill, group meals, the feeling that they're not alone.
SNYDER: Yeah. This is our own little family here. We refer to these people as our family.
SMITH: Yeah.
SNYDER: When we all get together, it's like a big family sitting around the table.
SUMMERS: Malls in many parts of the country are struggling. So before we parted ways, I asked Anita and Annette what they'd do if, one day, this mall didn't exist anymore.
SMITH: I can't walk up and down hills.
SNYDER: Yeah. We'd have to find something else.
SMITH: Yeah.
SNYDER: We've talked about it. If it goes away, what are we going to do? But we just don't think about it. Hopefully they will succeed, and we can still walk.
SUMMERS: Tomorrow on the show, we travel to Florida to meet some of the nearly 600 pickleball players competing for a chance to play in the National Senior Games next year.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: I started out - I was hooked. Like, the second game I ever played my life - hooked.
(SOUNDBITE OF DIONNE WARWICK SONG, "WALK ON BY") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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