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Walkathon

Recently there was a two month long event happened in my workplace. Two month is too big for an event but it was great. It was a competition of walking or Walkathon. So?  what is great about walkathon?  It's common now a days and happens everywhere. Well, but it happened in my company, it was two months long and it was executed with help of digital technology (supporting Digital India Drive 😀) and most importantly I participated in it 😋 and no...I did not win :( but I participated and walked 5.5 Lacs steps, around 335 Kilometers. This may not be accurate, but even with 10% error, it will be 300 Kms. Wow. Winners completed around 15 Lacs steps and 900 Kms. It was organized by my company in cooperation with another fitness club. We used google fit for measuring steps. And one another application for teams formation, and statistics.

Here is it how it happened...

All the employees of the company were divided in 12 groups, one Capton was selected for each team. And competition was started on one particular day, and continued for next 8 weeks, day and night, on week days, and on weekends. Now it was job of every employee to walk and walk and walk, walk for their team, walk for their life. :). The best part was, everybody can see, who have walked more or less till now. So if you see your opponent have walked more steps, you automatically get encouraged to surpass his/her steps count. And that's how it continued for next eight weeks.

But, as you might know its never easy or straight forward in India or with Indians. :) . After a week, it came to know that only 50% members of each team are interested in game. Rest were not much interested or were busy in work or life. Now it was job of captons to step in and motivate them. For some teams it worked and for some it didn't. The app had a leader-board, an individual and team-wise. So it was clear who is ahead and which team is leading till this time. But there was trick. Many teams started creating strategies using some tricks. First, app would show steps only if user sync his or her steps and not otherwise. So some teams wanted to hide their current status to surprise others. So they stopped syncing. And now it was not possible to get current status clearly. So sometime a team is in 1st number and on next day it may go to 4th Number. Second, this competition was for walking. But some intelligent minds found out that if you just move your mobile phone in hand standing in one position still step count increase. So..great, people started increasing steps even while working :). And..if MI band is used and tied to hand all day, still step count increases infinitely. Hmm, but since all teams applied this strategy, it got normalized, and we can say still it was a fair competition.

Over the time everybody started walking regularly, it definitely forced people move bit and motivated doing exercise in the morning, at night. Many people started making records in walking and step counts, in one day. I noted that 88000 was the highest steps one man took in one day. Groups started going for treaks on weekends to increase steps and what not. And in some cases, family members of some got motivated too and started walking. Overall it was great experience.


This competition definitely made me walk more than I generally do. I achieved the step targets which I earlier felt impossible. My monthly graphs got better. well I did not win and neither my team. But I believe it was great Idea. This idea can be extended, to other companies. Same competition can be arranged in family, among friends, among whats app group. And good news, it does not matter where you are on the globe. And ultimate aim of good health can be achieved.

What an Idea sir ji!!!

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