NEW ALBANY — A three-day holiday weekend normally gives people a chance to kick up their feet and relax, but Tom Pickett is using his weekend to keep his feet moving.

Pickett, 59, a Floyd County Councilman and a part-time employee at the Floyd County YMCA, walked 101 miles during the Memorial Day weekend.

“I hope it will motivate people,” he said. “If I can do it anybody can. It would be great to see people get in better health.”

Pickett said he started walking about 10 years ago at his wife Rosaland’s behest. He averages about 10 miles each day, walks to work every day and has dropped nearly 100 pounds since he started walking.

He attributed the exercise to the visible changes in his health, in addition to helping him get off medication he was taking. The transformation Pickett has made in his life, he said has already inspired some others who need to improve their health at the YMCA.

That challenge extended itself into a holiday weekend when Pickett set a goal for himself to walk a longer distance. He gradually increased the distance he was walking to 40 miles “just for fun.” And last Labor Day his wife said, “why not try 100 miles?”

So Pickett took up the challenge along with a friend, who walked part of the distance with him. By the end of the weekend he had logged 100.04 miles on his pedometer.

This Memorial Day weekend he wanted to try it again and added one mile to his goal.

During the course of his weekend walking, which started Friday, Pickett said he will log about 26-30 hours on his feet.

“It all adds up after a while,” he said.

There have also been some unintended benefits.

“It saves me gas, money and it’s healthy for me, too.” he said.

But the real goal has been to improve his health and lately, to be a source of motivation for others.

To help Pickett with a little motivation of his own his friend Paul Cunningham joined him Sunday morning to “help him through the last part of it.”

“I think it’s a sense of accomplishment,” Cunningham said, when asked why he thinks Pickett braved the hot weekend weather to walk 101 miles. “There’s just a lot of people out there who see him.”

He added that visibility may have an impact on others who see him walking around New Albany.

“It works for me,” Pickett said. “I feel better at my age now than I did in my 30s.”