Teams step to it for healthy challenge

Teams from all over the borough have been stomping their way to better health through a step counting competition.

And when it comes to a fun way of keeping active, you could say that this fitness challenge really was a walk in the park.

As part of Wigan’s Wellfest celebrations, Inspiring healthy lifestyles threw down the gauntlet to organisations to put forward teams of five to take part in their great Step Challenge.

Competition organiser Rob Mentha said: “The challenge was to get the teams to track their movement over four weeks. It was designed to get people moving more often and to show them how physical activity can be integrated into their daily lives.”

Inspiring healthy lifestyles provided activity trackers for the contestants to use. The information was downloaded through a smartphone app, allowing teams to track their progress and see how they were faring against others.

In total there were 82 teams all vying to take the most steps and record as much movement as possible. There was also an individual challenge of completing at least 70,000 steps in one week - which 98 people achieved.

And when the dust had settled and the steps had been counted, the teams had notched up an amazing total score of more than 54 million steps.

That’s the equivalent of 27,000 miles or walking the length of 475,200 football pitches!

The team with the most steps was the IT Girls from Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust (WWL) who notched up more than two million.

Team member Helena Overend also took the title of best individual stepper with a personal total of 729,185.

The other team to be recognised as part of the challenge was Wigan Borough Clinical Commissioning Group’s (CCG’s) Run You Fools.

This plucky team took top place in the most improved category after recording a 173 per cent increase in steps between the second and third weeks of the challenge.