The Third Degree

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About 6 weeks ago, on my work’s intranet homepage, there was a contest announcement. Create a team of four, be one of the first 20 teams to register, pay $5 each to join ($20/team), wear a pedometer 24/7 for six weeks and keep track of our weekly steps. The winning team earned 80% of the entry fees (which came out to be about $80 per team member. I was excited and told my branch about it. They were interested and elected me team captain (whoo hoo!). We sent our registration fees in as soon as we could and soon received a surprising confirmation email. We then learned that work was going to let 123 teams (103 more than they originally stated) join the competition. This bumped the winnings from $80 to $492. This made our team even more excited.

The competition began and my team was fantastic about tracking their steps and adding a few here and there. When we turned in our steps for the first time, we thought we ruled the roost with 300,000+ steps. We soon learned that another team had slammed us with 800,000+ steps. Instead of getting down on ourselves, we picked things up. During week 2 we were able to BEAT the #1 team and take first place. We won a pair of fancy walking socks. As of week #3, we are in fourth place. Monday marks the beginning of week #4, and the Trius team (pronounced “Try-us”) has set a goal to be in 1st place again. The almost $500 means so much to all of us, and we’re setting a goal to earn that money.

The goal of earning that money has also set about a new change in my life. I have turned into “Incredibly Active Girl”! During week 2, when I realized that I couldn’t disappoint my team (as the captain and all) so I I stepped it up … literally. I made it a rule that before I turned on the laptop, I had to spend some time adding steps to my pedometer. I began walking between 45 and 60 minutes every day that week and I watched the pedometer numbers soar. By the end of week 2, I was bored with walking so I added a little jogging in. I noticed that my jogging wasn’t earning as many steps (my strides are longer) and so I decided to try some interval training.

As of week 3, my body has already changed, along with my mindset about physical activity. I have lost almost 10 pounds, my pants are fitting better, my quads are tighter and my calves are rockin’. I’ve noticed my stomach is getting flatter and my arm muscles are starting to show again. The best thing though? The reappearance of my single chin. My face is regularly round, but with the extra weight I had on my body, my face was a tad rounder … so this weight loss has helped out that chin thing.

I have more entries I want to write about this training, but felt like I needed to introduce it before I start talking about podcasts and sunscreen and hats and sunglasses and the heart-shaped sweat I see on the the guy who always passes me as I begin my workout.

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