Every year, thousands of people from workplaces across Scotland take part in the Step Count Challenge, an online walking challenge where teams of five record their walking activity over eight weeks, compete on a virtual leader board and hopefully have a bit of fun with their colleagues along the way. The challenge has been running annually for over 10 years and more than 30 billion steps have been recorded in that time.
But, as we’ll hear from our guests, the challenge is more than just a leader board.
In this episode of Voices of the Walk, five participants in this year’s spring Step Count Challenge tell us why they are taking part and what they hope to get from it.
We hear from ACOSVO’s Pat Armstrong, Scotways’ Richard Barron, Paths for All’s Emma Anderson, Parkinson UK’s Lorna Fraser and Joe Hamill from Bells Food Group.
They talk about how walking has helped them connect with their colleagues, provide space to think and clear the head, and challenge themselves to build walking in and around their busy working day.
Every year, thousands of people from workplaces across Scotland take part in the Step Count Challenge, an online walking challenge where teams of five record their walking activity over eight weeks, compete on a virtual leader board and hopefully have a bit of fun with their colleagues along the way. The challenge has been running annually for over 10 years and more than 30 billion steps have been recorded in that time.
But, as we’ll hear from our guests, the challenge is more than just a leader board.
In this episode of Voices of the Walk, five participants in this year’s spring Step Count Challenge tell us why they are taking part and what they hope to get from it.
We hear from ACOSVO’s Pat Armstrong, Scotways’ Richard Barron, Paths for All’s Emma Anderson, Parkinson UK’s Lorna Fraser and Joe Hamill from Bells Food Group.
They talk about how walking has helped them connect with their colleagues, provide space to think and clear the head, and challenge themselves to build walking in and around their busy working day.
Voices of the Walk SCC : June 2022
00:00 Intro
Welcome to voices of the Walk, Paths for All’s everyday walking podcast. Our mission is to get Scotland walking: everyone, everywhere and every day. In this podcast series, we’ll be hearing from a variety of Scotland’s walking champions who are helping make our vision a reality.
00:18 Pat
I’m Pat Armstrong, Chief Executive of ACOSVO, the Association of Chief Officers of Scottish Voluntary Organisations. At ACOSVO, we have a Step Challenge team - we actually have two teams. And this is something that we did a couple of years ago and we’re very keen to take part again. Our team captain of my team is Graham and I also have Ash and Isla and Philly joining me on my team.
I think as a team it’s a really good way to have some fun. We do tend to get a little bit competitive, which is great fun and it really does encourage us to get outside and do more steps. And I suppose for me it has been harder over the last couple of years to find ways to fit
walking and physical activity into the working day. You know, we’ve been spending a lot more time at home.
I used to try and make some of the commute, some of my walking time and I got a lot from walking to and from meetings. You know, time to think and prepare and then time to reflect afterwards. A lot of that went during the pandemic. So it’s great to have a way to remind ourselves and as we move back into a more hybrid way of working, to work out how we can fit these in and I think it was very important, you know, during the pandemic that we made sure we got outside every single day. And when allowed as a team, we would get out together and have our meetings, walking along side by side or once a fortnight we’d get together as a whole team for a team walk and that really did make a difference to us all.
I think in terms of benefits, benefits for me personally when you’ve got an incredibly busy life is the fact that you can put your devices down, you can walk away from your desk, you can enjoy your surroundings, expend energy and get fit at the same time. But for the team, I think it’s really important for their wellbeing too. It’s important for all of us to know that it’s actually okay to go away and walk. I know sometimes, certainly if I have a strategy to write, or a difficult speech to write, actually just going away and thinking about it means that when I come back to my desk I can sit down and it flows much more quickly because of the time I’ve spent walking and thinking. So it has benefits in so many different ways.
02:55 Richard
Hi, I’m Richard, the Chief Operating Officer for Scotways, the Scottish Rights of Way and Access Society. I’ve always loved walking, particularly hill walking and my parents tell me that, when I was young, we went for a family walk. When it came to that time when you had to turn back and be safe, I’d always go that bit further. I think we’ve had a Scotways team in all the Step Count challenges so far. Sometimes we’ve actually managed two. This year we’ve one team made up of most of our staff members from across the central belt.
We’re captained by our National Secretary Alison. We’re called the Steplar and we aim to be top of the leaderboard. It’s never happened yet, but we can hope. There are some great team names out there, and ours might seem a bit dull by comparison, but it’s not. It’s got ancient roots. We’re named after the Steplar Drove Road which runs across the Blackwood Forest from Cabrach to Glenlivet up in Morayshire. Our Heritage Paths website, which you can go and have a look at heritagepaths.co.uk says that it crosses some of the bleakest moorland in Scotland.
Working from home does make getting the steps in tricky. The standing desk I got during lockdown has certainly helped. Some days I get my steps up by walking on the spot during Zoom meetings or even walking around the house when I’m on a phone call. But it’s much nicer to get out and about, wander through Bathgate to the Petershill reservoir or Ravencraig or even along rights of way and up to Balbardie Park. They all give great views out across West Lothian and beyond. When I’m visiting our Edinburgh office, it’s much easier to get the steps done, as I cycle to the station, catch a train through to Edinburgh, then I walk from Waverly Station up to the office. Sometimes I go the quick way and sometimes I go the longer way, up Jacob’s Ladder, over Calton Hill. The views are so panoramic, it sets me up for the day, it’s great.
I find walking calms the mind - it helps me to think. After a good walk I’m much more ready to tackle those tricky matters and I find it easier to avoid distractions. I also feel more relaxed and I sleep better too.
04:55 Lorna
Hi, my name’s Lorna and I live in Ayr, which is in South West Scotland. I’m Ayr born and bred, stayed in other places, but I have moved finally back into Ayr again, which I’m loving. We’ve actually got two teams in from Parkinsons UK. We’d never done it before and it’s been life-changing. All my team mates, we’re all over Scotland and we only see each other over Zoom or meet together once a year face to face, which wasn’t happening sort of in the last two years.
I’ve never met Amanda and I’ve never met Ruth. I’ve done work with Claire before and Catherine, so it’s really nice to be working with other people and we’ve got a WhatsApp group, which is great and we talk to each other and find out how we’re all doing and Amanda really keeps up going. We send photos of where we've been and things that we’ve seen, so that’s really nice. It makes me get up more from my desk because I wear my watch every day from as soon as I get up in the morning until I take it off at night. It makes me get up, whereas before I just wouldn’t bother and I could sit for hours, but now I really get up and I make sure that I do at least walk every half hour, even if it’s just around the house. We’re home based, always have been, but at the moment, for the past two and bit years we’ve really had no visits, no group work or anything like that so we’ve been sort of chained to, as you would say, the desk of doom, staring at the wall, staring at the computer. So it’s made me get up and about and when I try and get my walk or my run done post-work because it gives me a chance to unwind from my work and get back into family life, so it’s really like my drive home kind of thing. It’s my down time.
As I say, pre-covid we were out and about all the time, but we’ve really been stuck at the desk for the past two and a bit years. It really helps me reduce the pressures of a busy workload and it really gets me out of the house because if I didn’t do this challenge I don’t think I could be out of the house as much. It helps me to think and problem solve and it also helps me to sort of de-fizz, to breathe again and get my shoulders back in the right place and not be stressed and have them up round about my ears. So it means that I actually get outside and I can walk, run, I’m breathing and I’m taking in the elements and I don’t care if it’s raining or not. I’ll stick on my waterproofs and waterproof trousers and out I go.
07:59 Emma
Hello, my name’s Emma. I live in Stirling with my family. I have decided to take part in the Step Count Challenge this year. This will be my 4th or 5th Step Count Challenge, so it’s not new to me. I had my fitbit all charged and ready to go. But I am welcoming some new faces to the team and that’s something that I really enjoy about taking part in Step Count Challenge, is that your team is often people that you don’t normally get an opportunity to work with. So it’s really fun to have a focus with my colleagues other than work, that can bring us together and get us to know each other a bit better.
This year I am part of Scrambled Legs at Paths for All, led by our excellent captain Karen. There’s five of us in the team and four of us have been doing challenges before, but we do have a member of the team who is brand new to the staff family and this will be their first Step Count Challenge.
I do these challenges for a few reasons. The first primarily, to take part in a team activity - I really enjoy it. But for me, like a lot of us, especially with a young family, yes we are very active but the steps that I take in the day are normally steps for others. By that I mean I walk to nursery, I walk to school, I walk the dog, I walk to the shops, I walk to the pharmacy, I walk to the laundry and very rarely, though I really enjoy a really good walk, am I able to feel like I can prioritise the time for me. To walk simply for myself, out of the house, alone or with the dog and go for a really good stroll.
I really wish I did this all year round because the benefits I feel are instant and they make a huge difference. Our busy workloads can often see us working in front of a screen for far more hours than we would choose to. And now working from home is pretty much the norm for most of us. That travelling that we used to do - and for me that was a walk to the office most days - means that my step count has diminished. So I really enjoy focused time, out of my house, time for me. Physically this makes me feel a lot stronger and I sleep much better. But it also impacts my work and how I’m able to focus. Sometimes I just need to get up, move, re-group my thoughts and come back to a task. It makes a huge difference.
11:27 Joe
Hello, my name is Joe Hamill and I’m from Coatbridge. The Step Challenge team we have at Bell’s Foods this year consists of myself, David, Adriana, Dominica and Anna. These are four staff who work in the factory, all in different locations.
What we’re aiming for this year is roughly the same as last year. Staff morale boosted last year and we found that, after that first week, when we got over the sore legs, they were actually really, really enjoying it. They were going about the factory with a smile on their face which is very, very good to see.
What myself is aiming for this year, through the Step Challenge, as the previous year and again I mention again I’m very competitive is to exceed the target of steps I made last year, which was just over 1 million. So I’m going for 1.1 million this year. It can be done. I’ve had a look at some of the days from last year where it dropped a little and that was always over the weekend. So I need to get off the couch at the weekend more and get out and make more steps.
The benefits really I got last year was, from a physical point of view I felt a lot fitter than I have in the last ten years. It was also mentioned by some of my work colleagues that I was actually walking better with my head back and my shoulders forward. They could actually see the spring in my step and it’s good to get that kind of feedback as well. From a mental health point of view, I felt very very sharp. Coming into work, things were not as cloudy, not that they are cloudy, but felt very sharp in my own mind.
And last but not least I would like to say and give a big mention to my wife Angela for putting up with me. There was one Saturday morning when it was actually raining and I was going out for a walk and she says, “where is my husband? My husband doesn’t do this”. So it was very very funny, but the end part of it was, three weeks after I had started, she was actually coming out walking with me as well. That was very good and my wife actually likes the new me. So, getting family members, getting work members involved in this. I think that’s the highlight of seeing how other people react to: one the competitiveness, but it’s not all about winning, it’s just taking part that actually helps.