THE PEDOMETER CHALLENGE

Dammit, I fell off the face of the universe again. This time it wasn’t my fault. I wanted to work on the blog, but it turns that I want a trip to Paris even more. I am sure that you can all understand where I am coming from.

Let me explain what’s been going on. My company is sponsoring a pedometer challenge as part of its employee wellness program. They gave us all free pedometers and challenged us to walk the distance from London to Paris over the course of five weeks. For those of you trying to do the math on that, it comes out to 11,600 steps per day. Allegedly, this is 10% more than what we are supposed to do under normal circumstances. One of the lucky people who make it to the virtual finish line by the end of the challenge will win a trip to Paris. I WILL BE THIS PERSON, EVEN IF IT KILLS ME.

Two weeks in and I can fairly say that it may very well kill me. Ugh, seriously UGH! Do you have any idea how many steps I rack up on my average day? 6000. I walk the dog twice a day, chase after two kids, park two blocks from the office and go move my car over lunch (street parking SUCKS!) and trip into the little shopping district over my lunch break. And after all that I am only halfway there. Motherf-er.

When 8:30pm rolls around, I finally have the kids down for the night, the sweet siren song of red wine calls from the kitchen and like the dumbass that I am, I’m strapping on my walking shoes and headphones to go truck it 2.5 miles around the neighborhood. Or should I say neighborhoods….I live in Europe so 2.5 miles covers about 16 neighborhoods and perhaps a couple of city limits signs.

I cannot catch a break either. One night it threatened to rain and so I had to do 35 laps of the four blocks around my house to keep from getting caught in a downpour. Another evening I went to the gym and powered through 4.5 miles on the elliptical and the damn, cheapass pedometer didn’t register half of it. WTF! Thank god for self-reporting. Last night I tried to get the kids to do a 20min dance session with me. Little G thought it would be funnier to attach herself to me, so I had to alternate between sprinting around the dining room table and trying to do the Roger Rabbit with a 25lb weight on one leg.

The worst part of the whole thing is the knowledge that it is 100% my damn job’s fault that I am not walking enough. I bet stay-at-home and work-at-home moms walk at least 15,000 steps per day. Instead I gotta work for the man from 8-5 and then work for him again late at night and I am still not guaranteed to win the trip.

If I’m not here, if crickets are chirping on the facebook page, if you start to see moss growing over the homepage header image, now you’ll know I’m out walking. Heaven help them if I don’t win that trip.