This quarter Health Services introduced a program called 10, 000 Step Winter Challenge which is an individual challenge that began on Jan 14 and lasts 40 days till March 21. A person is considered to be “active” when he or she walks the equivalent of 5 miles a day which is about 10, 000 steps. In order to keep track of the number of steps taken, a pedometer was supplied to each participant. Originally Health Services had bought 200 pedometers that would be given to 100 students and a 100 staff but more people wanted to participate in the program so they decided to buy 100 more pedometers.
The idea to implement this program at De Anza came from Mary-Jo Lomax, a health educator at Health Services at De Anza. Lomax was at a meeting of other community college health professionals two years ago where a woman from a school in Southern California had organized a walking program for students. Lomax said, “I was intrigued by the idea.” Lomax started looking into the idea from late August to early September 2007 and found an Australian website www.10000steps.org.au. She also spoke about the idea with Mary-Kay Englen, the program coordinator at the Staff and Organizational Development Department at De Anza, who had been looking for some sort of exercise program for employees. Along with Lomax and Englen, two to three more employees got together to discuss the details of the program. Lomax said, “We all liked this idea because it was something that almost everybody could do. In other words, you didn’t already have to be ‘in shape’ to join and the focus wasn’t on weight loss.”
Participants should visit the website to post their total steps for the day. At the end of the challenge, the total number of steps taken will calculated and a certificate will be given congratulating participants and also stating which destination they have reached over the course of the 40 days if they had walked from Cupertino.
1. Cupertino to San Luis Obispo 217 miles 6,217 daily steps 435,190 Total steps (after 40 days) 2. Cupertino to Santa Barbara 323 miles 9,243 daily steps 646, 940 total steps (after 40 days) 3. Cupertino to Anaheim 444 miles 12,690 daily steps 888, 370 total steps (after 40 days) 4. Cupertino to San Diego 539.6 miles. 15, 417 daily steps 1, 079,190 total steps (after 40 days)