NLC team take getting active in their stride

Workmates from North Lanarkshire Council have taken a national walking challenge for workplaces in their stride.
The Take a Hike team from North Lanarkshire Council's legal services won the Autumn Step Count Challenge 2018The Take a Hike team from North Lanarkshire Council's legal services won the Autumn Step Count Challenge 2018
The Take a Hike team from North Lanarkshire Council's legal services won the Autumn Step Count Challenge 2018

Three teams from the local authority were among the top five performers after the Autumn Step Count Challenge 2018 which saw over 420 teams from across the country take part.

Paths for All, Scotland’s national walking charity, runs the Step Count Challenge twice a year – an eight-week challenge in the spring and a four-week contest in autumn to encourage people to be more active during the working day.

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The autumn challenge saw over 2000 people compete, with the winning team, Take a Hike, being made up of five colleagues from the council’s legal services who clocked up 3,863,859 steps between them in four weeks.

Fellow North Lanarkshire teams, Sole Sisters and the Bolshie Badgers, were third and fourth respectively as the council entered 25 teams in all.

Take a Hike team captain Mark Henderson said: “It was a lot of hard work. Originally, we started out saying we were all going to walk 10,000 steps a day, but it soon became clear that wasn’t going to cut the mustard.

“Even 12,000 steps a day wasn’t going to give us a competitive edge, so we decided to push for more like 20,000 a day but that kept going up, too.”

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“As a team we all did different things, some of us walked in the mornings, and others in the evenings, with one member getting a personal step count of one million.

“I didn’t think we’d win – I only wanted to beat the other team in our department!”

The aim of the Step Count Challenge is to get people walking and more active during the working day, breaking up long periods of sedentary behaviour.

To sign up for the next one or for more information visit www.stepcount.org.uk.