Pedometer Challenge

Ok, so I will start this post by saying that I am competitive….

This month my work had the “Summer of Wellness”, there were lots of activities and seminars to do with being healthy.

One of the activities was a contest to see who could walk the most steps, and each of us wanting to compete was issues a pedometer. At the beginning of the month HR send out an email that the race was on until August 31st. The pedometers reset at 100,000 steps and we were required to check-in with HR each time it hit 100,000 so they could track the progress and reset our pedometers.

At first I did my normal workouts and simply always had my new companion, my white pedometer along for the ride. However this all changed when I checked in about my second week for 200,000 steps and the woman in HR told me that someone else had already checked in for 300,000 steps.

Man!, Holy Cow!, What is going on!….remember I told you I was competitive. 😉

I asked in a very calm nonchalant way “How could she be so far ahead of me?” And she replied…”Well Kathryn has started speed walking up to 5 miles a day.”

There it was, walking…. I had been doing mostly running… so I had to do a test

So I went out on a run and ran out and walked back and you guessed it…walking was the winner for steps, way slower but way more steps.

So this began my walking campaign, I was not going to be beat…

• Walking in the morning before work
• Walking during my lunch hour
• Walking or Running in the evening after work

and guess what I learned –  that walking is great….

• You don’t beat up your legs as much as running so you can do more of it, more often
• You do beat up your shoe heals when you walk quickly
• If you are consistent it burns lots of calories

After 5 weeks of walking/running I won the step contest with 683,000 steps, which is the equivalent of about 340 miles. My closest competitor was the same woman at 500,000 steps (awesome by the way). The prize was a bag of health swag, but I just wanted to see if I could do it.

My biggest causality was my right heel which got really sore and inflamed from all of the speed walking.

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