You may already be a member of the Marathon Walking Club, whether you know it or not.  Here's how:

If you can walk two miles twice daily for a week, you'll walk 28 miles - more than a marathon in a week.  If you can walk it in a week, then you can walk it in a day.  It's that simple.  For those of you in the metric camp, that's three kilometers and a few steps twice daily.

Nearly everyone can walk a couple miles, and nearly everyone can recover to walk another couple miles later in the day.  Herein lies the secret to your training:  1) Break up your effort into manageable pieces, so that your body adapts naturally, 2) Repeat small successes many times over, and 3) Understand your own exercise and recovery cycle.

The fancy word for this training cycle is "periodization."  This concept has roots in the work of Hans Selye, who introduced the word "stress" to international language.  Periodization was popularized by athletes competing in the Olympics, described in texts by Tudor Bompa, and practiced by Lance Armstrong in training for the Tour de France.

The key ingredient to the training cycle consists, not only of training consistently, but of understanding your body's need for rest and recovery.  This training insight allows your body to adapt naturally.

If you can walk a marathon a week for three weeks consecutively, along the parameters described above, then you can experiment with increasing your stress load by 10% or 15% the next week.  At the end of that week, ask yourself how you feel.  Can you perform the same distance the next week?  If your body says the demand was too much, then you can drop back to your previous level of success.

Usually it is a small injury that tells you that your body needs a little time to recover and adapt.  If you follow this prescription carefully, you can take the little nicks in stride without enduring the setback of a bigger injury.

Once you have adapted to a new threshold for three consecutive weeks, you can try stretching yourself a little on the fourth week.  On this basis you can gradually work in longer outings on the weekends, until you can walk a marathon in a weekend.  For example, you might try walking five miles at a time, three times a day, for two days.

After a peak effort, allow yourself a modest, maintenance level of activity, sometimes called "active rest."  The body comes back stronger when allowed to adapt, but it wears down under incessant stress. 

When you dedicate yourself to the regular habit of walking, the first step is the most difficult, but the next one comes more easily.  It may take 20 or 30 minutes to warm up and find your groove.  Then your body starts going on automatic pilot, and you can enjoy your surroundings. 

Find your own rhythm and your own comfortable pace.  If you are conditioned to walking, you reach another threshold of relaxation after about three hours.  If you aren't in condition, the key is knowing when to rest and how stay loose.

Walking for health is a "Win-Win" exercise.  It's not a competition where one person "beats" another.  It's a race for life, measured by well-being, that everyone can win.

You don't have to be a star to walk for your health or to cover a marathon distance.  Just allow yourself time for recovery in your training.