On Our Way to San Francisco

Members of the Communications Office return to the CAC after adding more steps to their totals..

by Sarah Gordon

In 2011, the County Communications Office was busy promoting health and fitness to the public as part of Live Well, San Diego!.

Then about a month ago, we learned an employee wellness program here was about to launch. We’d be helping promote that too.

It was finally time to ask ourselves: Are we walking the talk? Or are we sitting in front of our computers during work, eating at our desks, commuting, then flopping on the couch most of the evening?

We decided if we were going to encourage everyone to get healthier, we’d better do it too.

That’s why the County Communications Office is on its way to San Francisco! We’re walking and running there from the County Administration Center.

Who knows how long it will take each of us go the 500 or so miles, but three weeks into the trip on January 9, we’ve collectively travelled 414 miles.

Since I’m already past San Clemente and leading the pack, my colleagues generously volunteered me to write this.

Of course, what we’re really doing is keeping track of the miles we walk or run each week and charting our progress with pins on a big map. We haven’t decided if the first one to reach San Francisco gets a prize or bragging rights.

We’re counting miles travelled during lunch, breaks or on our own time. We’re using smartphone aps, conventional pedometers and online mapping programs to find our distances.

So far, the game seems to be motivating some of us. One communications specialist who was always at his desk and suspected of living in the office now announces at the end of the day he’s walking to Horton Plaza. And he really gets up and goes! A couple of us who usually walk at lunch have resisted the temptation to skip days and go out to eat, because we want to have lots of miles to report for the week.

You overhear people talking about walking.

“I walked two miles before work; I walked once around the building,” Communications Manager Linda Miller told some of her employees the other day. “And, get this, if you walk to Filippi’s and back, it’s a mile.”

The San Francisco challenge is lighthearted and just a little competitive. We have no idea whether it will keep us moving.  

But just three weeks into this quest, more than two-thirds of us had joined the game, and almost everyone in the office is talking or thinking about personal fitness levels. That’s something new for us.

We’ll keep you posted on how it goes here. Please tell us about fitness initiatives in your departments so we can cover them on InSite. Maybe we can all inspire each other to get moving!