STEPtember has officially ended for another year. 24 people at BluprintX got involved: walking, swimming, running, riding, even cheerleading, to raise money for the Cerebral Palsy Alliance (CPA). By the end of the month, altogether we’d “walked” a total of 3,978,564 steps, and raised a total of $5,801, with BluprintX dollar-matching staff donations.
While we could just tell you the winning BPX teams, where’s the fun in that? Instead, we’ve crunched the numbers (numbers are always fun), and found some pretty surprising stats…
If the average step length is around 71cm, then we covered 2,824.78km in the month of September. Or, if you’re a fan of alternative metrics for length measurement, we walked:
- 66.9 marathons
- 1/136th of the distance from the earth to the moon
- 300km longer than the distance from Sevastopol to Glazov
- 3x the estimated distance from the carpark to the beach on a hot summer day
- 70% of the width of Australia: “we’ll get you one day, Perth!” – the Sydney office
Our number one stepper was Graham Porter for team BPX Gold, who managed a whopping 488,273 steps. That means Graham walked 346.67km, or:
- 144,447.4 horses lined up front to back (no horses were harmed in the making of this blog)
“The Cerebral Palsy Alliance do such important work”, said Graham, “and this is always a really great way to get involved in their amazing cause. On an unrelated note, does anyone have a small foot spa that would fit under a standard office desk?”
Close behind Graham were Helen Edwards and Floris Oranje, at 418,377 and 402,251 steps respectively, walking for team BPX Red. Combined, Helen and Floris walked 582.65km, or:
- 2.75% of the entire length of the Great Wall of China – guess they’ve still got a way to go if they ever want to keep up with Genghis Khan…
With two team members in the top three, it’s no surprise that team BPX Red was the winner in terms of total steps, with an impressive 858,708 steps altogether. Congratulations: Veronica Holmes, Floris Oranje, Helen Edwards, and Poonam Patel.
But money talks, and the winning team for funds raised was BPX Green: Andrew McLean, Adam Edwards, Paul Iudean, and Lee Hackett. This just goes to show sometimes you don’t necessarily have to “walk the walk” to “talk the talk” (although they did also walk, 624,941 steps to be exact).
Well done to everyone else who got involved: Yiyi Zhou, Nora Slattery, Haya Khalid, and Simon Kinder for BPX Blue; Mina Saleeb, Liz Iudean, Megan Natty, and Mike Chase in BPX Purple; and Dean Johnson and Graham Porter making up BPX Gold.
On a serious note, we’ve worked closely with the Cerebral Palsy Alliance for years now, so this cause is one particularly close to our hearts. Globally, approximately 17 million people have cerebral palsy, 34,000 of those people live in Australia.
The CPA plays a very important role in the research and awareness of cerebral palsy around the world, plus provides a range of services to support the community.
If you missed out on this year’s STEPtember, never fear – you can still get involved. Visit cerebralpalsy.org.au to see what you can do to help this amazing organisation.
