Stegtävling

Yesterday was the official start of our company "Stegtävling". Most companies have their own version of the event, which is to see which person or team can travel the furthest distance in a month through some form of physical activity. Sweden is very big on physical wellbeing, particularly in the workplace. This year our company challenge is to travel from our office in the north, to our office in the south, passing through every office along the way. A total distance of about 3,000km. Distances are counted in terms of steps taken, with various non-walking activities being assigned a certain number of steps depending on the duration of that activity. Every morning we are to log in our efforts from the previous day into a page on our company Intranet. Clearly our IT guys have very little to do at the moment. Not that they haven't been clever as the page includes a live updating map which shows the position of each team as they journey south. That's kind of neat. Teams have a minimum of 7 members and a maximum of 10. That makes it a little tougher for teams such as mine, as we 7 have to average almost 14km a day, just to make it to the finish line by the end of the month. Forget about being first. And that's not looking terribly likely. I went for a 10km run yesterday and, even with the steps walking around home, I came up short. This may have to take some lateral thinking. I'm contemplating taping the measuring device to the leg of a short legged dog with ADHD. Just to get back into the game again. There have already been a few dodgy results being posted, with several people recording distances over 30km for the day. Possible, but I'm not convinced about all of them. Yesterday was a holiday, so we'll see how it all looks after a proper working day. The original leader was a girl who had apparently travelled 147km in one day. We figured that she must have got her coat caught in the door of the bus as she was getting out, and had been dragged to the next town. The more likely cause was that she had a couple too many zeros in her entry. And that's what seems to have happened. It's a bit of a fun event and gives me a bit more of a push to get out there and do stuff. After Day One I'm currently lying (as we speak) 130th out of 350 who have posted results. Overall there are about 750 employees who have entered. Our team is sitting around 20th place I think, out of 80 teams. Early days yet, but it's still at the fun stage.