In June I'm going to walk from Western New York to Cleveland, and I need to get in shape for it

It must be "250 Week" here on the blog. Yesterday I told you how I was duped out of $250. Today I'll fill you in on my plan to walk 250 miles.

So my company, Vitamix, will be celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2021. This surprises a lot of people, many of whom assume we couldn't have been around before 1980 or so. But it's true. Vitamix (which wasn't actually called Vitamix until the mid-60s) was founded in 1921 by William G. "Papa" Barnard, the great-grandfather of our current president and CEO Dr. Jodi Berg.

Since 2017, I have been planning the various elements of our 100th anniversary celebration in my role as Director of Communications. We'll be doing all kinds of things, both internally and externally, to mark this milestone, which only a very small percentage of businesses reach.

One of those activities is my little walk. Back in 1938, members of the Barnard family joined a man named Bernarr Macfadden on a 265-mile walk from Cleveland's Public Square to Macfadden's "Physical Culture Hotel" in the village of Dansville in western New York.

Macfadden was the Jack LaLanne of his day (if you're old enough to get that reference). He was preaching the benefits of exercise long before it was cool. He hosted these long-distance walks every year for a period of time in the 1930s, starting from a different city each time. 1938 marked Cleveland's turn.

Anyway, I plan to recreate the walk by myself this coming June. The thing is, the Physical Culture Hotel no longer exists, nor is Vitamix (then known as "The Natural Food Institute") based any longer in downtown Cleveland. So my plan is to start in Dansville and make my way westward to Vitamix HQ in Olmsted Township, Ohio. We'll promote my walk through our employee and public-facing social media and communication channels to try and bring some attention to the Vitamix 100th anniversary.

(By the way, the distance is slightly shorter than the 1938 walk because of the existence today of certain walkable roads that are more direct and weren't around 80 years ago.)

The trip should take me 15 days, assuming I can walk an average of 17 miles a day. This, it turns out, is no easy feat. Walking or not, that's a long distance to cover in one day when you have to get up again and do it the next day. And again the next day. And again the next day. And so on.

So I've been walking almost every day an average of 30 miles a week to build up my stamina. My training walks are almost always right around 15 minutes a mile. I would imagine we'll have to back that off to 16 minutes or more when the time comes in order to prevent injury, which is a real concern when you're 51 years old.

I also have to drop some weight. I have been steadily gaining since I was down to a very skinny (for me) 166 pounds back in 2016. I'm off to a good start there, but there are still pounds to shed so that I can minimize the impact on my joints from so much walking.

There are perhaps two morals to this story:

(1) You should always try crazy things. It will keep you young, at least in your head.

(2) Don't allow yourself to get out of shape because getting back into it when you're no longer in your 20s is tougher than you would think.

My only concerns? Getting enough coffee every day and figuring out where to pee while I'm walking (these two things obviously go hand in hand).