By SALLIE SATTERTHWAITE
sallies@juno.com

Used to think I had the high ground when it came to walking. Not any more.

I started in 1985, after coming home from Germany embarrassed by a daughter who walks everywhere.

"Mom, I can't believe you're not in better shape than this, at your age," she chided me as I gasped for breath half a block behind her. "What are you going to be like when you're 60?

Sixty sounded very distant then, but I knew she was right, and came home a convert. At the time, I had a rather stressful job, and I started walking to relieve tension after work.

It took a while to enlist Dave, who by then was retired. When I told him Mary would wear him out, he began walking with me strolling, really. We'd stop and look at birds, visit with people we encountered, pick up litter. His pace held me back, but at least he was willing to go three or four miles every evening.

"Go ahead," he'd grumble, slouching along. "I'm not out here to race with you. This speed is comfortable for me," forcing me to decide between a better aerobic workout or the pleasure of his company.

Still, it paid off. On his very first trip to Europe, where we travel by train and on foot, he was grateful to discover that he had built up at least some endurance.

Over the years, we've continued walking regularly, if not strenuously. At times, friends kept us moving, but their work schedules changed or they moved. Left to our own motivation, we got lazy and tended not to maintain the speed it takes to improve the tone of heart muscle. But we were walking, and feeling terribly self-righteous.

A couple of things changed that. When Dave had his wake-up call in May ironically, while walking he resolved to do better. Even with repairs successful, his surgeon made it clear that Dave's performance on the treadmill did not support our claims that we were walking seriously.

"Regularly, maybe," the doc said, "but not vigorously enough to do you any good."
There's something about a double angioplasty and narrowly avoiding open chest surgery that can make a believer out of a guy. Dave added a stopwatch to the mile meter he was already carrying, and set out to improve his minutes-per-mile to 15 or better.

Now guess who is trailing behind, squaw-like. Who has left binoculars home and learned to walk right past litter. Who no longer speaks to friends on the path except to explain hastily that we're-timing-ourselves-can't-talk-now-bye!

But before our sense of self-righteousness had a chance to kick in again, something else happened. Our friends began walking with purpose. Walking circles around us. Walking for Good Causes.

These people are serious. I'd say dead serious, but that's the point: It's life they're serious about. One is a breast cancer survivor whom I once knew as a self-indulgent heavy smoker. Later this month she's walking in her second Avon Breast Cancer 3-Day, a 60-mile fundraising hike from Lake Lanier to Piedmont Park.

The experience last year, she says, absolutely changed her life. And not just because she learned to sleep on the ground in a tent full of strangers.
She is awestruck by the courage of her fellow walkers, some of whom are actually undergoing chemotherapy for their disease. The friendships developed during hundreds of hours of training have been among the most intense of her life.
"This is the most challenging, the most wonderful thing I've ever done," she says.

Others say, "I'd put it right up there with marriage, having children and grandchildren." Before last year, the most athletic thing most of these women had ever done was "to run out and get the paper when it rains," they admit.

They train diligently, feet slathered with Vaseline to prevent blisters, building stamina on weekend jaunts, biking and walking shorter sprints on weekdays.

They're raising funds for cancer research, but at the same time, they're finding in themselves resources they didn't know were there.

Another friend-turned-athlete really, she has will do a marathon through Dublin, Ireland, to raise money for arthritis research in

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