Healthy living: Al Fara’a teams walk off with Step Challenge top honours

46 teams of five people from workplaces across the UAE have been competing in the GetFitArabia Corporate Step Challenge, to prove they’re willing to go the extra mile in the name of fitness. The winning team was the Step Pounders, from Al Fara'a General Contracting, who completed 5,676,900 steps in five weeks.

Louise Muratha, left, of the Beehive team walked around Dubai's JLT with the women in her group. She says the challenge changed her attitude to health and fitness. Antonie Robertson / The National

For some people, going to work for the past month has been like a walk in the park – a long, long walk.

That's because 46 teams of five people from workplaces across the UAE have been competing in the GetFitArabia Corporate Step Challenge, to prove they're willing to go the extra mile in the name of fitness.

Now the challenge is over, and the 230 participants can take off the Jawbone Up fitness-tracker wristbands they’ve been wearing to monitor their steps.

The winning team, from Al Fara’a General Contracting, was the Step Pounders, who completed 5,676,900 steps in five weeks.

They were followed closely by their colleagues on the Al Fara'a Steppers team (4,814,365), with The National's team in third (4,316,702). J B Challengers were fourth (4,300,956) and Semco Tigers finished in fifth (3,360,935).

Ajay Kumar Singh, 32, from India – the leading walker from the Step Pounders, with a personal total of 1,472,327 – says he is nursing his blisters after walking for 11 hours a day outside of working hours.

“My body is hurting, I am having bed rest now," he says. “I am very tired. I walked every day from 3.30am to 7.30am. I easily completed 10,000 steps at that time. I then walked again from 6pm to 1am. I had blisters on my feet, but I still walked.”

Despite his impressive step total, Singh was outwalked by The National's Ajay Chandel, who managed an incredible 1,569,306 steps – the best personal total in the contest. He did this by walking between 50 kilometres and 65km a day – the equivalent of a daily stroll from Sharjah City Centre to Jebel Ali.

Chandel, 35, grew up in the Himalayan region of India and is no stranger to epic walks.

“As a child, I had to walk 10 to 12km a day, up and down, through Himalayan rough tracks to school and back,” he says.

He was already doing 15km to 20km walks as part of his daily routine before the challenge began – despite the fact that his job, as The National's senior web developer, means he gets little exercise at work.

“During the challenge, I walked at least every hour in the office, catching other office guys smiling at my crazy walking,” he says. “The Jawbone band helped, because it vibrates if idle for an hour. It was just a craze to win that motivated me to take more steps.”

After work, Chandel left his car at The National's offices on 15th Street and walked to his home near Mushrif Mall on 25th Street. He would then take a nap before getting back on his feet.

“Walking in the park makes me bored,” he says. “So for any small jobs, like using the ATM payment machines, I walked down to Electra Street or Hamdan Street. By doing these tricks I remained energetic.”

Chandel then walked back to the office, sometimes as late as 2am, to collect his car and drive it home. All this exercise meant time away from his wife and two children. “They would only walk with me in malls," he says.

The long walks also took their toll on his feet, but not enough to make him rest for long.

“I had six blisters in different places,” he says. “I put bandages on those areas and continued to walk.”

Other participants took the competitive aspect a little less seriously, but were still motivated to walk a lot more than they would have otherwise.

Louise Muratha from the United Kingdom, an operations director for the Beehive Group, whose team finished in 21st place, admits she wasn’t the biggest fan of exercise when the challenge began.

“But I decided to change that this year as I’m turning the big four-oh,” she says. “I took on a personal trainer earlier this year, but it’s still challenging to hit the goal when you’re in an office most of the day.”

The women in Muratha’s team walked together in the evenings from JLT, around Dubai Marina, through JBR and back, which she says works out to about 10,000 steps – just short of the 12,000-step daily target that the contenders were aiming for.

Teams who hit their group target of 60,000 steps a day have been entered in a lottery for prizes from sponsors, including Right Bite, Adidas, Alpha Destination Management and Alpha Tech. The winners will be picked during the closing ceremony on Wednesday at Dubai’s Pullman Hotel. There will also be a draw for teams with the highest average number of steps each day, and the most consistent individuals.

Fourteen of the teams (28 per cent of the total) hit the 60,000 step target every day.

“We’re happy we managed to engage so many of the teams”, says Nauman Muhammad, the director of Duplays, the sport and social club that organised the challenge.

“The walking was quite consistent, even as the temperatures rose. We feel it’s been a big success.”