A team from Chichester District Council has travelled all the way from London to Rio in a virtual journey, to take the winning prize in the Reaching Rio workplace challenge.
Team Bulwinkle was the first West Sussex team to reach Rio and received their prize from West Sussex County Council’s Cabinet Member for Community Wellbeing Christine Field.
Each of the five team members, Craig Duffy, Claire Edwards, Lucinda Dugan, Angela Bakes and Marlene Wescott, received a pair of Rio flip-flops, Reaching Rio t-shirts and gym membership at Inspire Leisure.
Christine said: “Congratulations to the team on their achievement. More than 290 teams signed up to travel the virtual journey from London to Rio, as the city hosting the football World Cup final, and converted physical activity into miles.
“For the second year running this has been a terrific challenge for local companies. One of our Council aims is to increase the number of local people who take part in regular exercise and Reaching Rio has proved to be a really innovative way to get people interested in new sporting activities.”
From walking to football, dance to swimming, Reaching Rio converts all exercise into miles and takes teams on their virtual route from London to Rio. All activity is logged on the website at www.reachingrio.org or via the smart phone app.
After the challenge ended, the final statistics show:
- Total activities logged: 64,191.
- Total time logged: 69,507 hours 20 minutes.
- Total miles earned:2,868,287.
- Total calories burned: 27,782,944 (That’s enough to power a Nissan Leaf electric car for approximately 111,132 miles).
Claire Edwards of team Bulwinkle said: “We all really enjoyed the challenge and we learned that we can be quite competitive. We each had our favourite sports, from hockey to zumba, to horse riding, to weightlifting. The team also liked going out for walks during our lunchtimes, as this was something we could do together regularly. It brought conversation into the workplace as we had another team entry from our department so we quite regularly discussed each other’s progress and different sports we all tried.”
The challenge was developed by West Sussex County Council’s Public Health team. People who are physically active have a lower risk of many chronic diseases, such as heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, strokes and some cancers. It can also boost self-esteem and mood, and reduce the risk of stress, depression and dementia.
Reaching Rio will be returning for a third year in 2015 – keep a check on the website to see when teams can register to take part.