Exercise "Challenge"

Our work wellness program has set up an exercise challenge.  You win it by having the highest team average for weekly exercise minutes (or steps or % weight loss)  One of my friends in another business group asked me to join his team, (correctly) figuring that I was already training and logging minutes.  He's a marathoner, I invited another one of my friends (a Colfax Ambassador who also works here).  I was hoping he'd invite other big numbers people.

I'm thinking he's glad he sucked me in.  I'm carrying my team.

Yes, I'm logging more than double the majority of my teammates.

I admit, I exercise a lot.  In fact, this past week has been an ass kicker.  My coach had ACL surgery a week ago and I'm guessing she wrote my plan when she was all doped up on percoset.  This week is HARD.  And I'm hungry all the time.  Holy cow.  I was not prepared to be this hungry this early in the season.

While I'm posting good numbers, I do wonder what my totals would be if I was in peak IM training.  I usually have 18-20 hrs a week of training when I'm peaking.  That's 154 - 171 minutes/day.  Which is a ridiculous volume of exercise.  So what I'm doing now is just sort-of ridiculous and I was hoping I would place amongst the top individual exercisers.  But I'm not.

WTF?  Who is this Kim person and why is SHE working out nearly 19 hours a week.  The challenge website also posts the people with the most steps/day.  When I checked last week, Kim had 20,000 steps/day.  So, my theory:  she was counting all of her steps (as in daily activity + possible exercise) in her total minutes.  Also: she's walking (or walking + running) 6-10 miles a day.  And exercising 3-4 hours a day.  I just don't see it, but who knows.

Also entertaining are the motivational emails that end up in my email box.  I understand this program is directed at new people or people who don't sign up for insane races.  But they're funny.

It never fails, my Friday morning email reads:

Don't even think about giving up -- there's still plenty of time to hit your weekly Achieve a Better You goals.

You have through Sunday to complete those minutes of exercise, so use the next three days to finish off your remaining XXX minutes of exercise.

Yes, its called the weekend.  When I do my longer workouts.

I also remember getting an email encouraging me to get in 30 min of exercise a day.  I'm pretty sure I am well over that on a recovery week.

And the Monday email:

Time to take a victory lap: you hit your 590 minutes of exercise goal in Achieve a Better You! Awesome job!

Want a tougher challenge? Adjust your goals to increase your exercise minutes.

Thus, the crux of the problem with the challenge (I think).  I think it makes things more fair if you're graded against how you fare against your self-assigned goal.  That would equalize the field.  Right now, I'm literally carrying my team to make us look like we're doing ok when in reality, we have several people who are failing to log in their minutes.  You make the ranking based on % of goal met, and that takes people like me out of the equation.

Its been silly and I was really hoping we'd do better as a team.  Oh well.