The Steps Challenge – WTF?

Intuity Technologies staff took part in a company-wide Steps Challenge recently. The idea was that staff would be divided into random groups of 4 or 5 members and over a 5 week period, our aim to add up all our steps to try to make it from Galway to China.

The ‘WTF’ reference refers to ‘Walk That Far’, as the estimated steps total from Galway to the western Chinese border town of Kashgar is 7,653,750 steps.

Obviously, to make this target we needed as many staff on board as possible. Thankfully 36 staff members signed up which meant that 8 assorted teams needed to amass over 956,000 steps between them.

Now let’s do the ‘Math’. That means achieving over 27,300 steps per week per person, which equates to nearly 7,000 steps per day.

Before this challenge began, if you think about it, an average staff member might get up in the morning, get dressed, commuted to work, worked, have lunch, worked again, commuted home and then the evenings were downtime time with family. With little activity, the total activity could be as low as 1,500 steps per day.

Stepping Up The Steps

So how do you go from a paltry 1,500 steps to up on 5 times that total? Well, you push yourself. Forget that boxset, forget those evenings lounging – we encourage staff to get active and walk the dog, play a few holes of golf or stride to the shops.

To aid their journey, we promoted the use of various walking apps on mobile phones or Fitbits to help motivate staff over the 5 weeks. It is amazing what a steps target will do to a couch potato. Day & night, the phone ticked away, accumulating step after step in order to reach a daily total for the teams and the group. The magical 10,000 steps a day was achievable… with a push.

The challenge, which started on Friday 12th April, finished on Thursday 16th May. The combined teams’ total steps have been totted up and the total is 11,046,924. Over 11 million steps, we did it, we beat our target. WTF!