On Monday 16 November, 813 members of UAntwerp staff (good for 163 teams) started the Millionaire Team Step Challenge. The aim? To log one million steps in teams of five in four weeks’ time. Every week during the challenge, one or more teams will be sharing their experiences on the blog. First up: the step teams in the Communications Department.
The Millionaire Team Step Challenge was a great opportunity for many people to get back into action. Through our ‘virtual coffee machine’ channel in Microsoft Teams, we launched a successful call that led to three step teams: ‘The communicative walkers’, ‘Taking a step into the world’ and ‘A breath of fresh air’.
Lots of people were worried about not having enough time or motivation, and registered mainly under the motto of ‘every little helps’, but our competitive instinct soon took over. The keen joggers among us started doing extra kilometres, other colleagues dug their running shoes back out of the cupboard, and many of us started scheduling a lunchtime and/or after-work walk.
Extra challenge
We also launched a photo challenge: for the first week the challenge was one foot in the air, next week we’ll try it with both feet. Cross your fingers (or toes?) for us!
Our families are getting involved in the step challenge too, from partners and kids to four-legged friends. The puppies haven’t quite got to grips with walking the whole way, but we’re finding solutions for that. At the weekend we go on trips to the woods around Antwerp or further afield, and a few drops of rain won’t stop us.
Every little helps when it comes to logging steps, especially on weekdays. That means that from now on, every move in the Daelemans household is accompanied by a ‘Tour de Flat’. Good for about 150 extra steps per tour.
On schedule
After Week 1, it looks like the three Communications teams are well on track to reaching one million steps. By 10 a.m. on Monday morning, ‘The communicative walkers’ had clocked up 455,175 steps, ‘Taking a step into the world’ had logged 368,124, and ‘A breath of fresh air’ had already passed a quarter of the final target with 254,972 steps (impressive, seeing as their team is one colleague short). On to Week 2!