The fittest agency in town…

AAR Fit@40. 10 weeks. 55 teams. 220 people.

70 days of walking as many steps as humanly possible.

We caught the walking bug last year. Inspired by Robin Charney, our digital consultancy lead, we split AAR into three competitive teams, armed ourselves with a step counter each, and collectively walked 15 million steps in 12 weeks. We got fitter and we raised some money for charity in the process.

It just had to be done again this year, but bigger and better this time. We made the challenge part of our 40th anniversary celebrations and invited teams from agencies to join us in the big walk.

Teams of four from 53 agencies joined two teams from AAR and stepped up to the challenge, battling it out day after day for 10 weeks, each walking a minimum of 10,000 (about 5 miles) steps a day. Many walked more. Much, much, more. And it all got VERY competitive.

TMW Unlimited’s ‘The Jet’s got off to a cracking start, dominating the leader board for the first two weeks, with each team member walking an average of 64 miles a week. The Gate’s ‘Walker Gate Scandal’ stole the leader board crown in week 3, besting The Jets by a slim margin of 5,000 steps.

And so it went on.

LIDA’s ‘The LIDA Loafers’ came roaring in and were champions in weeks 4 and 5 but The Walker Gate Scandal were having none of that: they wrested the top of the leader board back in week 6. And then, with three weeks to go, Karmarama’s mighty ‘Nice Treads’ – always a challenger in the Top 5 – put a spurt on and dominated as leader board champions in weeks 7, 8 and 9, thought they were still consistently challenged by The Walker Gate Scandal and the LIDA Loafers.

Whilst all this competitive walking was going on there were four mini competitions which allowed the competing teams to earn bonus steps.

There was the biggest walker – Tessa Barrera of Lexis’ Victorious Secrets walked 114 miles in one week to win that one.

Best team name and best team photo also garnered extra points for the teams. Lawrence Dallaglio and Ewan Paterson on BBH Sport were our guest judges here, selecting Krow’s ‘On your marks, get set, krow!’ as best team name and St Luke’s ‘Ox Trotters’ who triumphed with their Ox feet photo.

Check out all the teams photos below.

We even created three leagues – The Elite, Club and Fun Steppers – so that teams a bit further down the leader board could be champions for a week and win some extra steps.

People were doing the London Marathon as well as Fit@40. One team raised extraordinary sums of money to buy a customized wheelchair for the profoundly disabled daughter of one of their colleagues. Another team did a step work out challenge in fancy dress for charity, filmed by their agency colleagues who chose the tracks that the team worked out to. There were teams of account handlers versus teams of creatives. And the odd minor injury and lots of blisters.

But there had to be a winner.

At the glittering Big Winners Drinks on 9 June at Saatchi & Saatchi’s Pregnant Man pub, Karmarama’s Nice Treads fought off all comers to claim the victor’s crown. Jon Wilkins, Alex Gibson, Sophie Pesenti and Ed Rosie walked 5,343,845 steps – that’s 2,672 miles – in 70 days. An extraordinary feat (if you’ll forgive the pun).

The Lida Loafers were worthy runners-up, with their team of four walking 5,218,014 steps (2,609 miles), and the consistently fabulous Walker Gate Scandal came in at third on 5,073,645 steps (2,536 miles).

Ogilvy & Mather’s ‘Fun Steppers’ and MBA’s ‘M.B.A.wol’ won the Club and Fun League competitions respectively.

And I’m proud to say that one of the AAR teams made it into the Top 10 with ‘AARe We There Yet?’ claiming eighth place, with 4,469,717 steps (2,235 miles).

Take a look at the final results table and some photos from the Big Winners drinks below!

It’s been fun. It’s been emotional.

Thank you to everyone who took part, for signing up and sticking with it, week after week. It has seemingly changed some people’s lives, with many participants saying they’ll keep it up even though the Challenge has finished or that walking is THE thing and they will never darken a tube station again.

Others are signing up for further challenges, with one member of the ‘Krow Forth and Conquer’ team already training for a 50K charity walk in September.

And for some insane reason, quite a lot of you want to do it all again next year…