St. Joe’s places third in “Go Move” challenge.
St. Joe’s placed third against 22 other schools in the sixth annual “Go Move” challenge for the number of average workout minutes per participant.
The Go Move challenge is a competition among faculty, staff and administrators of Jesuit universities to see who can accumulate the most number of exercise minutes within a given month.
The competition began Feb. 1 and ended Feb. 28. This is the second year St. Joe’s has participated in the event. Eighty-four members of the university community logged a total of 89,825 total minutes, with an average of 1,070 minutes per person.
Participants track on the Go Move website the number of minutes of movement they achieved. Movement is defined as “anything that is going to raise your heart rate,” explained Rebecca Gushue, manager for employee benefits and wellness in Human Resources and one of the program administrators for the Go Move challenge at St. Joe’s.
Movement includes everything from active stretching to walking, jogging, games, yoga, tai chi and more.
Mary Ann McMenamin, academic compliance officer in Academic Technology and Distributed Learning, won the challenge at St. Joe’s for the second year in a row with 6,775 minutes (approximately 112 hours). McMenamin’s main forms of exercise included crossfit training, running, strength training, and biking.
“Running has been my one main thing that I always do for myself,” McMenamin said. “I think it’s important for people to get out there and move, even if it’s just for a few minutes everyday. It’s good for the body, mind, and spirit.”
The same people tend to rank high in the challenge every year, said Matthew Pettit, director of compensation, benefits and HRIS in Human Resources, and another program administrator for the challenge.
“The highest ranked people are typically the people you see year after year,” Pettit said. “They’re the people you see walking around campus, at the gym at lunch, and actively participating in some of the open sessions that we’ve had.”
Conor Lesch, assistant director of campus recreation ranked fifth in the challenge and logged about 3,640 minutes (approximately 60 hours) of exercise in the competition.
“I mainly do resistance training,” Lesch said. “I’m not a big cardio person.”
For Lesch, being a part of the Go Move challenge has not altered his workout routine, but for others, the challenge has become a motivation to exercise, he said.
“I think there are two types of people that participate in the challenge,” Lesch said. “There’s the people that want to start exercising and use the challenge as motivation. Then there are some people that see the challenge as a celebration of doing what they’re already doing.”
Although Go Move does not give away prizes to the winning university, St. Joe’s gives gifts to its top participants. As the winner, McMenamin will receive a healthy snack buffet organized for her department. The top five finishers receive Fitbits, and the top 10 are awarded insulated mugs.
