Another GCC Milestone

This morning I received another email from the Global Corporate Challenge. I have reached a total of 1,000,000 steps so far while participating in this year's challenge.  My team has only made it 52% around the world on our virtual tour. With just three weeks to go before we finish, I am fairly certain we will not be making it all the way around the world. That is okay though. I have found that the Global Corporate Challenge has gotten me to walk more than I would have previously. When I go shopping now, I am much more likely to park far away from the door than I was before. And if walking somewhere is a viable alternative to driving, I will walk. I hope I have the opportunity to participate in the Global Corporate Challenge again next year.

Five Million Steps

[caption id="attachment_188" align="alignright" width="221" caption="My GCC team has recorded 5,000,000 steps!"][/caption]

Yesterday morning I discovered an email from the Global Corporate Challenge in my work inbox. It was an email informing me that my seven-person GCC team has reached a milestone of 5,000,000 steps since the challenge began on May 19. Looking at my data, I have recorded a total of 965,120 steps myself. Of these steps, 234,448 were from the week before last week, the week I was on RAGBRAI. That means that I recorded nearly one-fourth of my total step count in one week out of the eleven and a half weeks we have completed so far. That is amazing.

RAGBRAI and the Global Corporate Challenge

My employer is one of many around the world participating in the Global Corporate Challenge (GCC), a 16-week-long walking challenge in which employees walk around the world virtually. This challenge began on Thursday, May 19, and ends on Tuesday, September 6.

While this event focuses on walking as exercise, having participants tracking their daily steps recorded by their pedometers, it also makes allowances for people who cycle or swim. This is going to help me and my team out when I am cycling across Iowa on RAGBRAI next week. According to GCC's website, 2.5 miles of cycling is the equivalent to 0.6 mile of walking, or 1,563 steps. So if I ride all 454 miles of RAGBRAI, excluding the optional loop on Tuesday, I will earn 283,841 steps for me and my team for the week. Of course, this is just the steps I will earn from cycling. I will be walking quite a bit once I reach my destination each night. I will of course be counting these steps as well.

Now I am concerned that the average of 40,549 steps from cycling each day will earn me a GCC "speeding ticket." Such tickets are issued whenever someone records an abnormally large number of steps for a day. If this happens, I will just have to explain to GCC why my step count is so high. This should not be too much of a problem, but it could delay my entry of some of my steps. As I have been averaging around 10,000 steps a day so far, this would be a significant increase.

I will be blogging about my progress on RAGBRAI, so be sure to check back next week to see how the ride is going.