Even the #frightbat saga didn’t manage to pull me away from my stepping. My apologies to our regular readers: I’ve been exercising.

Daily Progress

That chart doesn’t have today on it yet – but my reading will be 4,200 for cycling, 2,375 for swimming (I only did 500 metres in the pool today) and 7,000 plus a few for walking. A total of 13,575 steps for the day. That will give me an average for the stage of just over 11,000 steps a day even with my poor sore knee.

At first I thought it was “water on the knee” from overuse but I actually think it was tight hamstrings. Some stretches are helping, but then perhaps so did the ice, elevation and anti-inflammatory cream I’ve been rubbing in. Maybe it was a combination of going from 3,000 steps a day to 10,000 a day (overuse) and tight hamstrings. Whatever, I had a damn sore and swollen left knee then the right knee went out in sympathy!

Sedentary workers, so I read, tend to suffer from tight hamstrings so I’m not surprised. The recommended activity level for good health is a minimum 10,000 steps a day. I was doing 3,000. Not good.

The first two weeks were a struggle, but now if I don’t do the required level of activity, I feel crappy. It has taken 25 days to get to that point though. I can swim over a kilometre without feeling as if I am gasping for breath at all (that’s the no smoking!) and even the bike isn’t bothering me. Speaking of no smoking, I am still using the nicotine replacement therapy, but I figure it is better than smoking. Eight months is supposed to be the limit and I have only two months of that left. Mind you, with the added activity I am feeling the cravings less often most of the time, so that is good.

This 100 day challenge is divided into four stages of 25 days each. Today is the last day of Stage 1. Silly me, when I started this I thought the 10,000 steps a day was for the whole 100 days. Not so: we have to set a higher target than we achived in the previous stage. As I am struggling, as a desk-jockey, to reach 10,000 some days I have taken the conservative approach and set myself 12,000 a day for Stage 2, commencing tomorrow. Guess who will be doing at least a kilometre in the pool in the morning!

I have collected a few trophies along the way.

Trophies

The Global Corporate Challenge has a partnership with UNICEF, so I saved some pennies and donated. That trophy didn’t require steps. The chatting trophy doesn’t require steps either, just chatting. That is easy for me. 🙂

I love my Iron Man trophy and desperately want to get the final little heart, but I need to clock up 180 kilometres on the bike to get it. The walking and swimming targets I already have, just the bike needed. I don’t like the bike all that much. But I will get it!

The one with the apple is the weight loss trophy. Well, not weight loss exactly: it is for setting a target weight to reach by Day 100. Despite ALL that exercise, I haven’t lost a gram. NOT ONE GRAM! In fact, the scales went UP initially. They are now back to where I started. I am hoping when I weigh myself tomorrow morning I will have actually lost something. I am fitting into clothes I haven’t fitted into recently, so changes are happening. I just hope that starts showing on the scales soon.

Yes, I’m a supporter of the concept of the Global Corporate Challenge. Here is some results from last year’s winning company, Alcoa.

As a result of the GCC, 80% of participating Alcoa employees are now meeting the 10,000 step recommended daily activity level (vs 26% pre-GCC). Moreover, 63% of employees have reported losing weight and nearly 90% say GCC has already had a positive impact on their relationship with exercise. Source: http://www.gettheworldmoving.com/blog/alcoa_worlds_most_active

Due to the knee/hamstring issue, I have been spending more time in the pool so my flower collection has also suffered. I do have the odd one or two I will share tomorrow.

Just a word about the Frightbat issue. There is LOTS of activity! Personally, I want THIS as a Frightbat t-shirt!

But there are others.

Destroy the Joint has t-shirts!

As does Van Badham! Van also has baby rompers.

If you love Frightbats, there are plenty of ways to support.

Lots of us were rather miffed to have been left off the list, frankly. 😛 I self-appointed as a “Trainee Frightbat” on Twitter.  Other nominees missed the final cut too and were not happy either. 😥

There was one consideration not mentioned a lot. The columnist who started the whole thing nominated an all-white panel of frightbats. Ebs wrote a very good article about this aspect. Do read it.

During the week it was also World Refugee Day. A reminder to support the making of Bloody UnAustralian if you can. A good time for the High Court to rule against the government on protection visa limits!

Not to mention Ron Williams fight against the federally funded school chaplaincy program. The High Court ruled against the government on that too! Chrys Stevenson provides a great wrap-up on Ding Dong! Chrys also has some breaking news, about another government “swifty”.

If you don’t know the frightbats by name, Jen kindly provided this!

I just haven’t had the opportunity to write about any of this weeks hot topics! I have directed you to good sources though, so you can catch up. I’m off to ice my knees again. Have a great weekend. 🙂