Walking to Work
Do you fancy taking a walk during your lunch break today? Need some help with planning a route? Use the helpful widget below, from Walkit.com to generate a round walk from your building.
The National Walk to Work Week, run by Walking Works, was this year held between 26th to 30th April. SWELTRAC encouraged people to incorporate walking into their daily routine by walking to work and/or during work and supporting them with tips, advice and motivation.
SWELTRAC promoted the Walking Works – Walk to Work Week website and encouraged all organisations to register. The online tool allowed workplaces to track the collective miles walked by their staff as well as allowing individual employees to track their own progress. As an added incentive SWELTRAC organised a prize draw for all the organisations who registered with the walking works website. The prize consisted of a scrumptious breakfast catering for up to 20 members of staff. We are pleased to announce that the lucky winners are LGC!
Overall, Walk to Work Week proved really successful with 21 organisations registering on the official Walk to Work Week website. The London Borough of Richmond upon Thames had the most participants across SWELTRAC’s five boroughs with eight organisations taking part in the challenge. In addition seven NHS sites also signed up to the event.
Interestingly, the nation collectively walked a total of 71, 602 miles which is the equivalent of 19, 889 muffins or five times around the world at London’s latitude! We hope you all enjoyed this year’s walk to work week and hopefully we’ll see you participate next year!
Studies show that walking can:
- Reduce the risk of coronary heart disease and stroke;
- Lower blood pressure;
- Reduce high cholesterol and improve blood lipid profile;
- Reduce body fat;
- Enhance mental well being;
- Increase bone density, hence helping to prevent osteoporosis;
- Reduce the risk of cancer of the colon;
- Reduce the risk of non insulin dependant diabetes;
- Help to control body weight;
- Help osteoarthritis;
-Help flexibility and co-ordination hence reducing the risk of falls.
(Sources: Davison & Grant 1993, US Dept of Health 1996, British Heart Foundation 2000)
We have come up with a few ideas which might help promote walking within your organisation;
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Pedometer Challenge!! Within your organisation organise teams of 4 or 5 and whichever team walks the highest number of steps over the week wins a prize. Pedometers can be bought from the Walking Works website.
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Organise a photography competition amongst your staff members as they walk to work, during work or during their personal time and the best photo wins. If the winning photos could be sent from each organisation, we would like to post these on our website and in our newsletter.
Useful Links and Downloads
;
Sustrans Active Travel Website
Active Travel Toolkit publications free to download
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