Counting the miles in the malls
As of Monday morning, Michael Lefkoe already had logged more than 50 miles. "This year, my goal will be 1,200," says the retired Cherry Hill accountant, whose pedometer topped 1,100 in 2015.
As of Monday morning, Michael Lefkoe already had logged more than 50 miles.
"This year, my goal will be 1,200," says the retired Cherry Hill accountant, whose pedometer topped 1,100 in 2015.
Lefkoe, 70, is a mall walker.
Six days a week, he laces up his New Balance shoes - the black pair one day, the white pair the next - and heads for either Cherry Hill Mall or Moorestown Mall. He refers to the route he walks as a "course."
A grandfather of two, Lefkoe is part of a serendipitous, unorganized, and congenial community of men and women, most of them middle-age or older, who exercise and socialize for free in the early morning, pre-opening quiet of indoor shopping centers such as Cherry Hill and Moorestown.
Nationally, malls may no longer be the hottest form of retail real estate. But for people like Bernadette Duffy, nothing beats a climate-controlled Cherry Hill stroll on a frosty morning.
"I'm not knocking Cooper River Park. I loved walking there when I was 40," says the Merchantville resident, 76, pausing to chat near Nordstrom. "But this is where I want to be."
No wonder. It's a shivery 22 outside and a shirtsleeves 70 inside the mall, where classical music flutters delicately in the ambience and Duffy's husband, Tom, shares a bench with their friend Frank Angelucci of Pennsauken.
Both men are 86 and enjoy walking, albeit a little more slowly these days.
"Look at these guys," Bernadette Duffy says, laughing. "I'm walking, and they're watching the pretty girls go by."
An absence of pressure and structure is among the pleasant features of mall-walking; a Zumba or a spinning class it isn't.
But, like Lefkoe, some walkers take it quite seriously.
"If you're walking and talking, you're walking too slow," says George McNeil, 82, who enjoys conversation with fellow walkers, but also likes to maintain his pace.
A Moorestown resident, he took up mall-walking after bypass surgery in 1993. "My doctor tells me to keep doing what I'm doing," McNeil says.
"I go to church first, at St. Peter's in Merchantville, and then I come here," he adds. "I walk in a 45-minute increment. Sometimes in the afternoon I'll also walk at Moorestown Mall for a half-hour."
"My treadmill died," explains clinical psychologist David Raush, 49, with whom I find it hard to keep up.
"I thought about joining a gym, but this suits my purposes," says the Cherry Hill resident, adding that some people "think I'm a nerd and a geek" for mall-walking.
When and where mall-walking originated is unclear, although architect Victor Gruen designed Cherry Hill and other early malls as places where pedestrians/shoppers could gather, as well as buy merchandise.
Malls became ubiquitous in the 1970s, the same decade that saw fitness and running explode in popularity. By 1985, the Los Angeles Times was reporting that a walking group called the "Go-Getters" was racking up miles at the Glendale Galleria.
And in 2015, the Centers for Disease Control and Preventon published a Mall Walking guide, an earnest testament to value of malls as a safe, conducive and convenient venue for a beneficial form of exercise.
"Mall walking gives anyone who wants to exercise and get fit a nice opportunity. We don't have a formal program, but it's a community service we've offered for at least a couple of decades," says Lisa Wolstromer, senior marketing director for Cherry Hill Mall.
"This is my 20th year walking," says John Mardirosian, 84, of Cherry Hill, whom I encounter walking that long stretch of the mall between Macy's and Nordstrom.
He met up at the mall Monday morning with Karen Clark, who's 68 and lives in Haddon Heights. The friends have walked Moorestown Mall but prefer Cherry Hill because it offers steps to climb.
"We avoid the escalator when it's running," says Mardirosian, who walks every weekday for about 45 minutes.
"Twice around the mall going into an out of each [entrance] alcove is two miles," he notes.
"I walk six days a week," Clark, a part-time pre-school teacher, says. "I like stairs, too."
So does Ed Warner, 72, of Haddon Township, a retired ad salesman, who had both of his knees replaced three years ago.
"I keep active," he says. "You've got to keep the motor running right."
Lefkoe, who says back problems prevent him from doing other sorts of exercise, likewise enjoys the health benefits of mall-walking.
But his routine is all about distance, not working up a sweat. He carries a cup of (mostly) decaf and travels the rows of stores, paying attention to displays and other details of modern merchandising.
That's because he worked for 33 years as an accountant for Philadelphia-area retail chains such as John Wanamaker and Deb Shops before retiring in 2010.
Mall-walking "is a way for me to keep up with the retail industry," says Lefkoe. "It keeps my weight down. And it keeps me out of my wife's hair."
On Monday afternoon, I ask him if 1,200 miles might not be too bold a goal for the year.
"As of now, I'm up to 60 miles!" he tells me. "If I do 100 miles a month -."
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