Steptember
October 1, 2026
During the last 30 days, the Painted dog office embraced Steptember and embarked on what can only be described as the most insane competitive step challenge we’ve ever done.
The crew consisted of 19 staff members, all who set themselves a personal daily step challenge and then logged steps throughout the day with the goal of meeting their targets by the end of the month. Our undoing was the app that lodged all our steps into the one leaderboard location, viewable at any given time of day (or night).
We began to live and breathe Steptember. It took over the lunchroom, our weekends and for some of us, even our sleep. Another awful feature on the app was the chat function where taunting competitors was not only possible but encouraged. You could go to bed one evening being #1 on the leaderboard, only to wake up and check yesterday’s board to find you didn’t even stay in the top 10.
We’re not going to say we had cheating, but there were certainly strategies employed to withhold steps from colleagues until the very last moment, and some even attempted to gather steps on their bicycles…
With all of that said and done, the team is breathing a sigh of relief that the step challenge is officially over. No more late night walks required!
Check out the final stats below:
|
Staff |
Kilometers |
Total steps |
|
1st Ruben |
508.76km |
695,479 |
|
2nd Claudia |
397.52km |
543,422 |
|
3rd Ben |
253.39km |
346,387 |
|
Calvin |
251.27km |
343,495 |
|
Justin |
240.37km |
328,596 |
|
Tara |
237.26km |
324,353 |
|
Bill |
229.03km |
313,093 |
|
Jacqui |
219.51km |
300,090 |
|
Jared |
209.99km |
287,050 |
|
Imogen |
195.57km |
267,350 |
|
Tye |
184.51km |
252,232 |
|
Tyler |
168.93km |
230,944 |
|
Elle |
160.6km |
219,535 |
|
Stephan |
128.6km |
175,801 |
|
Del |
125.8km |
171,976 |
|
Ruby |
117.88km |
161,153 |
|
Izzy |
112.33km |
153,554 |
|
Jillian |
58.71km |
80,246 |
|
Brent |
44.31km |
60,557 |
In total, the team did 5.26 million steps, with 8 people having an average of 10K+. To put some of these figures into perspective, on a map, Claudia walked well into Wildflower country, making it all the way to scenic Morawa whilst Ruben was just 50km short of reaching the seaside town of Kalbarri – that’s an insane amount of steps! In fact, Ruben’s 508km would take around 123 hours of walking to achieve – woah.
Here are the comp achievements:
Highest number of steps overall
Ruben – 695,479 steps.
Highest number of steps in any given day
Ruben – 37,554 steps.
Most competitive
Ruben (definitely lost sleep over this).
Least amount of steps (potato award)
Isabel.
First to be accused of cheating (but was a legit 15km run)
Jared.
Serious steppers – 10k+ average every day
Jacqui and Tara
