What We Learned During Our January Wellness Challenge
11 teams. 1,000 RVers. One month.
Beginning January 6th and ending January 31st, the Step It Up 2020 Challenge dared RVers to rack up as many steps as they could within the first month of the year. At the end of the month, the team with the highest daily average and the individual with the most steps overall would be declared champions.
In true RV fashion, employees took the challenge to heart. By February 1st, the step challenge participants had walked a lot. And we mean a lot:
- In total, we walked 193,897,586 steps (the equivalent of 3.9 trips around Earth),
- burned 8,725,391 calories, and
- lost 2,493 pounds (the equivalent of 119 pugs**)!
*The average pug weighs 20 pounds. British pugs weigh about 9 kilograms.
**No pugs were harmed in the measuring of these steps.
Now that the challenge is over, we checked in with some of RV's steppiest steppers to reflect on their experiences; what inspired them to join the challenge, what motivated them to keep going, and how they managed to keep their step counts so high. Here's what they had to say.
Jamie Liner, RV Charlotte
"I love a good challenge! It was fun to get to know some coworkers better in a friendly competition. We motivated and encouraged each other every step of the way (literally)."
Megan Severs, RV San Francisco
"I’m a goal-oriented person, so at the start of the challenge, I set myself a daily minimum goal that was challenging, but still doable. I then treated that goal as something that was non-negotiable, which helped give me that extra motivation to wake up early, run for a little longer, or take my dog for an extra long walk before bed."
Jordan Castillo Chavez, RV Charlotte | Individual Challenge Champion
"We had a Golden Door Scholars / Road to Hire alumni lunch with Ric in early January. He told a story about making a bet on running a marathon and not being prepared for it, but still coming through and finishing it by running a mile at a time. As he reached each mile, he would tell himself he could do one more and so on till he finished.
That sparked me wanting to challenge him to see if I could do the same. Once I passed him (fairly quickly), I saw that I could do more and more. Soon I was competing with myself to see how far I could take it. Having Cory and Nick also being part of the competition made it a lot of fun, and I think we all pushed each other to try harder as the competition was coming to an end.
As for strategies, mine were pretty simple -- by the last two weeks, I was waking up at 4:00 AM to walk two hours so I could start the day in a good spot. I changed my running shoes three times so the blisters wouldn’t be in the same spot! There was a lot of icing when I got home. I also elevated my feet at night, and I used lots and lots of band-aids.
Shout-out to the people at the gym and my teams (health, data-platform) who would motivate me to keep going, and to my brother Anthony for taking care of the apartment and me when I could barely walk back home."
Miguel Garza, RV Charlotte
"I spent the last month exhausting myself in pursuit of a top spot in this challenge -- too stubborn and too competitive to quit. My dog will definitely miss the longer walks, but my fiancé is so thankful that I don't have to pace around the house anymore."
Rafael Redondo, RV Brazil | Team Challenge Champion
"We created a Whatsapp group with everybody on the challenge, where everyday we displayed the previous day's results and how many steps each of us had walked. In the last days of the challenge, we would take lunch walks with a group of ~20 people. There were also groups going to the park to walk in the evenings for almost three hours!
The challenge made people committed to achieving the team goal!! Because of this energy, people were excited to join the group walks. People would even post what they were doing in the group chat on the weekends, and that really helped motivate everybody to go enjoy a long walk."
For more on our Step Challenge champions, check out our Instagram.