If you made (another) New Year's resolution to exercise more, and you're worried about your ability to follow through, you may want to be at a community workshop this week on living a more active life.

The free workshop, "Walk Your Way to a Healthier Life," will provide information about how to incorporate walking and bicycling into daily life. It is from 5:15 to 6 p.m. Thursday at the Art Theater, 126 W. Church St., C.

Mark Fenton, a walking advocate, author and a former member of the U.S. national racewalking team, will talk about the benefits of living an active lifestyle versus joining a gym or beginning an exercise program. He'll also talk about how communities can encourage active transportation such as walking and bicycling.

Fenton visited Champaign-Urbana in 2009 and recommended ways to create a more active, healthy community, said Cynthia Hoyle, a co-chair of the C-U Safe Routes to Schools Project.

That includes creating infrastructure and designing new developments that encourage walking and biking, Hoyle said, as well as measuring current behavior and attitudes toward travel around town.

"He will talk about how you can incorporate activity into everyday life, and walking to and from school is one of those activities," she said.

"It's both how you can incorporate it into your lives, and how we as community need to support that," she continued. "We have to make a special effort to eat healthy and to exercise ... so we need to provide the support on the community level both in terms of the built environment and social environment to make it easy for people to incorporate activity into their lives."

The workshop is sponsored by the C-U Safe Routes to School Project and the C-U Mass Transit District.