By Peggy Sue McRae

Journal contributor

We had the “buddy system” when we were kids. Summers spent at our grandparents’ beach cabin, we (my four sisters and I) were mostly free to run around the beach and woods “free range” as long as we had our buddy with us. Now in our 70s, my sister Sally and I have buddied up again, or as she calls it, we are “account-a-buddies.” We touch base with short emails every night.

A few years ago, I started doing virtual treks with “The Conqueror Challenge.” This company provides virtual treks as a fun way to track and inspire physical exercise. For $32.99 a trek, you can log onto an app and at the end of each day track your step count (or convert your chosen form of exercise into steps). You can then see where you would be on a map and you can toggle the map to see the “street view” of your location. When you finish a trek, they send you a cool medal (some with moving parts!). You get virtual “postcards” along the way and information about your chosen trek.

Because the treks vary greatly in length and all cost the same amount, I like to stretch my dollars and include an occasional long one. It was when I was on the North Coast 500, a 500-mile virtual trek around the northern edge of Scotland, that my sister Sally joined me. We are proud of our Scottish heritage and it was a pleasure to have the camaraderie.

We’ve done a few more treks together since and are currently counting our steps across the last bit of the historic Camino de Santiago pilgrimage along the north of Spain, another long one. The treks are a great way to learn something about places we know nothing about. Finding books and movies and even recipes and coloring books about the places we’ve trekked is part of the fun. After our long Spanish pilgrimage, we are off to Rio de Janeiro for a short one and then we have our eyes on Ireland.

We have both had days when we didn’t feel like doing our exercises but have done them because we knew we would be reporting in to each other. Recently, I took a “day off” from all the things I’m supposed to do daily for my health. Having my account-a-buddy helped me get back on my horse the next day. We both live by ourselves and have always been independent, maybe even fiercely independent, but the regular check-ins are reassuring. Beyond sharing our daily exercise reports, we share both our joys and our challenges and getting older does present challenges.

Do you have a goal that you would be more likely to reach by sharing your progress on a regular basis? Could you benefit from some friendly encouragement? An account-a-buddy could be a walking partner, a sibling or friend, someone with a mutual desire to stay healthy and meet daily challenges. Through the marvel of technology, it could be someone living far away or it could be a next-door neighbor. Especially for those of us who enjoy living alone the camaraderie of the buddy system can be a real blessing.