Last fall Doug Leland printed an article from a local track club web site and handed it to his wife, Sally saying, "Check this out."

Candidates were being sought for a 12-person team to walk from New York City to Los Angeles to raise awareness about the benefits of leading an active and healthy lifestyle.

The "Steps Across America" program, backed by several major health and sports-related sponsors, would feature six two-person teams. Each day two of the teams would walk 20 miles. On the two days when the eight members of the group weren't walking, they would speak before assemblies of school children and Boys and Girls clubs and staff sports and health clinics.

By covering a total of 40 miles per day, the team would cover the 3,177-mile route in three months, from April 17 through July 17.

Sally was more intrigued by the idea than Doug had anticipated and soon the couple was perusing the Steps Across America website (www.stepsacross.com). Convinced of the legitimacy of the program with such sponsors as Weight Watchers, Sportline Pedometers, IAMs pet food, Kodak, Coppertone, Centrum vitamins and Tracfone, Doug and Sally submitted applications, including essays about their commitment to physical activity. Then Sally ran up against a question that stopped her in her tracks: What's the longest distance you've ever walked? While she felt confident of her ability to cover 20 miles a day, Sally recalled only walking six miles at one clip, and she feared if she answered truthfully, the judges would disqualify her. And so there was just one thing to do. The next morning, Thanksgiving Day, Sally and Doug awoke at 3:30 a.m. and by 4 a.m. were headed out the door of their C Avenue home for a 21-mile jaunt around the perimeter of the island. They made three rounds of the circuit and by 9:30 a.m. were home with 21 miles clocked on Sally's pedometer.

"I felt great," said Sally. "I even walked down to Cafe 1134 for my morning coffee (decaf, she emphasizes) right after I got home. So that round trip added another two miles."

Several hundred people submitted applications and fifty finalists, including Doug and Sally, were selected for personal interviews by the walk's organizing firm, U.S. Concepts, in New York City. A week following their allexpenses trip to New York, both Doug and Sally were informed they had been selected. They were the only couple, married or otherwise, in the group.

Fast forward to April 10: the Steps Across America team meets in New York City. The ages range from 22 to 65: four men, eight women and Cabo, the IAMS dog. There's a minister and a former Secret Service agent who guarded Presidents Reagan, Clinton and Bush in the group.

The trek begins on a high note, with world champion figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi and all the sponsors at a big send-off party in New York City. The route has been meticulously mapped out by a U.S. Concepts employee. Most of it is along secondary roads including much of historic Route 66, those former highways that have now been shunned as the interstates passed them by.

The walkers find it safer to walk facing traffic. The United States is not pedestrian- or bike friendly, Sally discovered, with many of the roadways not having much of a shoulder. "And there are more people who are driving with cell phones and they just aren't paying attention," she said. "It got to the point where every time a car approached us, we would look in the front windshield to see if they even saw us."

The Lelands enjoy the beauty of the Pennsylvania hills and their trek through Maryland brings back memories of their courting days when Doug attended the Navy Academy at Annapolis and Sally was a student at Hood College. But all too soon it is the middle of May and the team is crossing the Arkansas Ozarks where it is hot and steamy. While some may like it hot, the walkers become decidedly grimfaced when the reality of two-months-to-go-with- steadily-climbing-temperatures sinks in. Soon they encounter triple digits in Oklahoma City. The team members gingerly approach their accommodating bus driver, David, who needs to rise earlier than anyone to ready the celebrity vehicle that escorts the walkers to each day's starting line - some days requiring drives of an hour and a half from that night's lodging. Could they possibly leave the hotel a little earlier, say at 4:30 a.m.? 4 a.m.? 3:30 a.m.? Please?

Doug and Sally typically walk a 15- to 16-minute mile, allowing them to complete each 20-mile segment in about 5 or 5 1/2 hours. They don't stop for lunch breaks and, often being in remote off-the-beaten-track locales, they, like their fellow teammates, require frequent bathroom breaks, often behind the nearest bush - that is, when there is a bush.

"With the intense heat, we had to stay hydrated," Sally explains. "At least Doug and I are married. Other teammates would tell their partner, 'Just go on without me and don't look back. I'll catch up.'"

As they cross Arizona and the Mojave Desert, the walkers are advised to wear hiking boots rather than tennis shoes; otherwise, the hot asphalt could melt their soles.

"Probably the hottest time we walked was just east of Scottsdale," Sally recalls. "That's the one and only time Doug and I tried a night walk so we'd have the next morning to sleep in. We started out a little after 5 p.m. It was about 108 degrees, but the heat from the asphalt must have pushed it up to 117. My shins felt like they were being shish-kabob'ed."

The state of America... and Americans

Walking across the country helps you get up close and personal and to really know the country, and the Lelands came face to face with its good, bad and ugly aspects.

First, the good: "We live in a beautiful, diverse, expansive and resourcerich country," Doug says. "And based on many encounters along our way, I believe much of our population is fair-minded, hard-working, creative, compassionate and determined. If Americans are convinced of the right thing to do, they will generally find a way to get it done."

But they also witness with disturbing frequency, particularly as they hit the country's heartland, the decay of former bustling downtowns. And, they both note, that almost without exception a Wal-Mart, with a full parking lot, is located just on the edge of town. Some towns are fighting back to preserve their communities and heritage - Vincennes, Indiana is an example. "They at least show that the best of the past can be preserved while moving forward with changing times," Doug noted.

Sally laments the enormous amount of trash they encounter. "We'd encounter rivulets of cigarette butts on the sides of roads. In Westchester County, Pennsylvania, I was shocked; it was almost like it was a depository. But that wasn't all. We'd see pieces of furniture - mattresses and chairs - thrown down embankments, which a lot of people wouldn't see if they weren't walking. The only places we didn't see this were areas such as New Mexico where there just aren't that many people."

In their online blogs (still accessible at the website), most of the walkers declared the high country of New Mexico one of the most beautiful sections of the entire route; the Lelands concurred. And at elevations as high as 7,000 feet, it was a breath of fresh air and respite from the intense heat.

But the most dismaying sight - and the ugliest trend - the Lelands encountered was the expanding girth of Americans, particularly its children.

"We saw firsthand that about 60 percent of the population would be classified as obese," Sally surmised. "At the very first middle school where we spoke to kids, many of them fell into the obese category.

"We encouraged them to raise their hands and ask questions, or to ask us questions in a more private fashion as we did a school-wide walk," Sally said. "What we learned from them was that, even though they desired to lose weight, they didn't have support on the home front.

"And until we can educate families, it will be a real fractured process. We need to get families to walk together. I'm not sure how many families are taking the time to eat dinner at home together and taking the time to prepare a meal together. A lot of families are eating on the fly.

"This may sound harsh," says Sally, "but any parent who is truly obese themselves and is supporting that lifestyle in their children - well, to me that is almost child abuse."

And the schools aren't promoting healthier choices in the cafeteria, Doug noted, with colas and candy in vending machines and starchy foods being the norm.

Doug and Sally observed Americans eating out, often at all-you-could-eat buffets, with the waistlines to prove it.

Doug, who works as an executive coach to business owners throughout the nation, finds it particularly disturbing that Americans appear not to be getting the message that we're getting fat and it's killing us.

"We see stories about obesity on the news all the time," he said. "My concern is that there seems to be a disconnect; there's just not a sense of urgency. We're all waiting for that magic pill that will make it all better, and not even thinking about the benefits that exercise can bring to us now."

In his coaching practice, Doug counsels people on four aspects of their wellbeing: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. "But it's not really an evenly split four-piece pie. You have to be able to connect with your physical well-being before you can get to all the other pieces."

Having to eat all their meals at restaurants throughout the three-month trip proved to be challenging. "We found that the further south we got, the more restaurants tended to fry everything," Sally said. "We tried to find foods that were grilled or baked; I can't tell you how many salads we ate. And we'd watch for restaurants, like Bennigan's, where you could get steamed vegetable side dishes. And we'd always have an ice water to drink."

As the group concludes their trip, they emerge from the San Bernardino high desert, past the Yucca Valley fire and the end looms in sight - and along with it, cooler temperatures. Not a minute too soon they cross the finish line at the Santa Monica Pier, cheered on by friends, family and a welcoming public, with all members of the triumphant team walking on the final day.

And the wheels are already rolling for their next venture...

Next steps...

Steps Across America was a lifechanging event for Sally and Doug, and has spurred changes not only in their personal exercise regimens, but in their plan to walk the country again. They plan to organize walks that criss-cross the country, including a San Diego to Seattle circuit and a Portland, Maine to Miami route, along with another crosscountry trek. But this time they want to involve a cause, such as the onset of Type II diabetes in young adults and now, alarmingly, children. "We'd like to piggyback our efforts on what former President Clinton is doing, to help get the word out about the epidemic and what it stems from - inactivity, starchy and sugary food choices and less refined foods - and to explain that it can be stopped. It's simply a matter of changing your lifestyle," says Doug.

"The component that was largely missing in the Steps Across race that we'd like to strengthen is an action plan for each community," Doug says. "And to do that we'll want to involve a network of nationwide service clubs, such as Rotary and Optimist.

"With the next generation, it may be the first time in history where parents bury their children and not vice versa," he adds. "People don't think about the long-term effects of their diet choices and lack of exercise — not only the deterioration of their own health but the financial aspects of it: the cost of insulin, immobility, inability to work and the impact on other members of the family.

"If kids would spend just 25 percent of the time they now devote to TV and computers to walking, the entire healthcare equation of our youth would change and juvenile onset of Type II diabetes would all but disappear," he said.

Sally has made it a commitment to walk six miles every day. "It's an hour and a half every day and I'm worth it," she says firmly. "If I don't take the reins and take responsibility for my health and fitness, I could be in real trouble," she adds, noting that her father's side of her family has a history of diabetes and there's heart disease on her mother's side.

Over the three months of the nationwide walk, Sally lost 15 pounds, which she said was a goal she had set for herself at the outset. "I'm totally off soda, and I know that water often satisfies what I used to think was hunger - it was thirst! Now I find myself reaching for water with a squeeze of lemon.

"I don't feel the day is complete unless I walk," she said. "It's 'think time' for me; reflection time. It makes me very aware of what's around me, a chance to take in all the beauty and I count my blessings with every step."

Incorporating daily walks is just part of the lifestyle change that Sally says is still "a work in progress" and, like true lifestyle changes, she is also examining all aspects of her life, including her employment. For the past decade, Sally has worked as a travel director with a team of convention support staff, taking on assignments for stints of a week or two at a time. "Ten of us would fly in to the convention site - always fabulous resorts with superb cuisine. Sometimes we'd work on cruise ships to Alaska or Canada. But the hours are always ridiculous, and I always found it difficult to work in exercise. I'd end up getting my exercise by walking the hotel corridors delivering packages to the conventioneers' rooms. If I were to take on more of these assignments, I'd insist on a real break - at least a couple of hours. I now know what my parameters are."

But Sally is planning to turn her avocation - painting - into a new career. "What's really nice is that I'll be making my own schedule with health and fitness being a priority in my life."

Anyone can walk 20 miles, says Doug. "It is just a matter of getting out and doing it. But even though most folks can walk 20 miles, there is really no need to - five miles a day (one to two hours) is plenty and is enough to create significant change."

Doug and Sally will be speaking to Rotary, Optimist and other service clubs locally and throughout the nation as they begin the planning and execution of the walks, with a goal to be on the road again by spring of 2008.