This year I will be taking part in a step challenge to raise money for the British Heart Foundation charity. I will be doing half a million steps in 50 days!
Challenge Completed!
Total Steps: 780258
CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT ME AND THE BRITISH HEART FOUNDATION BY DONATING NOW!
I reached 500k steps on 26th August 2020! I will continue to do 12k steps a day minimum until the end of the 50th day.
Why walking
I knew that this year I wanted to do at least one thing to support a charity important to me. What most people around me do when they want to raise money for charities is to take part in a race (usually running) and I thought that would be a great idea! Unfortunately, as you know, we’ve been a bit stuck in the house recently due to certain global pandemics.
During this time of being almost constantly house bound, my fitness has struggled and my waistline expanded. My normal 30 minute walk to work replaced with a walk down the stairs as I am now working from home. Now that things are starting to ease in my area, I knew it was to time to get back into fitness.
Something I’ve always enjoyed is walking. It makes sense for me to mix this with getting fit, and to support an excellent charity whilst I do so. A challenge for me, and to raise some serious money for charity.
Why The British Heart Foundation
There are many, many worthwhile charities in the UK, both on a local and national level. There are charities for all sorts of things and all of them are great causes worthy of support. Truly, I could pick many other charities and still be happy with my choice.
So why the BHF? Because of what they do, and who I have lost due to heart disease and other heart related issues. I do not want to go into a lot of detail on the internet about my family, but what I will say is that I strongly believe that BHF can make real progress so that other families might not lose their family members so early due to heart related problems, and those living with medical heart issues have a better standard of livings and better prospects.
There are many issues that can effect the heart. The BHF fund over £100 million of research each year into all heart and circulatory diseases and the things that cause them. Heart diseases. Stroke. Vascular dementia. Diabetes. They’re all connected, and they’re all under their microscope.
You can find out more about the BHF and what they do by clicking here.
In a perfect world, the government would fund the kind of research that the BHF and other similar charities do. Until we get to that perfect world, I will walk.
Please click here to sponsor me on this challenge and to support the British Heart Foundation!
Why 500k in 50 days
At first, I wanted to do half a million steps in two months. This would mean that if I wasn’t able to get steps in for a few days over that period it wouldn’t stop me from achieving the overall goal of 500k steps.
This was too easy. There was no challenge there.
If I can so easily complete the challenge then it is no longer a challenge but more of a tick box exercise. I wanted to not only challenge myself but be worthy of your donations to support this cause.
I reduced the amount of days I would have to complete the challenge to 50. This would require around 12k steps a day in order to reach half a million and will be a real challenge for me.
As you’ll see below from my step numbers so far, I’ll likely finish this challenge before even the 50 day mark. If I do, I will still aim to get 12,000 steps every day up until the end of the 50th day.
Progress
I’ll be keeping a record of my progress here, and also on my BHF fundraising page. It’s important that not only I make the half a million steps in a timely manner, but also can show I’ve done them. Luckily, I have a Fitbit device which will record my steps!
I’ll be using tables and screenshots from my Fitbit app to show my progress, and I’ll update this page weekly with the latest information.
| STEPS | |
| Sunday 26th July | 12584 |
| Week commencing 27th July | 117926 |
| Week commencing 3rd August | 120286 |
| Week commencing 10th August | 108856 |
| Week commencing 17th August | 108624 |
| Week commencing 24th August | 100617 |
| Week commencing 31st August | 101212 |
| Week commencing 7th September | 95388 |
| Monday 14th September | 14839 |
