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Monash walkers win global challenge

23 November 2005

Eight Monash university staff have put their feet up for a well-earned rest after racking up more than 27 million steps to be declared the winners of an international walking race.

Winning walkers: Mr Peter Lausch, Ms Jill Grogan and Dr Bala Balachandran.

The team won the 2005 Global Corporate Challenge, which involved 1430 teams in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the US who virtually 'walked' from Arnhem Land to Antarctica between 26 May and 8 November.

The challenge is in its second year and encourages people to improve their health and wellbeing by competing against other teams in a virtual walking race. Monash entered one team.

Mr Martin Doulton, general manager, Monash Sport, was a member of the university's winning team. "Prior to entering the challenge, most of our members each walked about 18,000 steps a day," Mr Doulton said. "Once the challenge started, we thought we would up the ante and see how much we could do."

Team members were pleasantly surprised to find their individual average was 23,065 steps -- about 15 kilometres -- a day. Over the five-and-a-half months of competition, the team walked more than 27.5 million steps.

"Our team should be proud of its contribution to the massive combined event total of more than 15 billion steps in this year's challenge," Mr Doulton said. "We got to within half a million steps of the actual finish line."

Mr Doulton said the team walked mornings, lunch times and evenings to achieve its goal. He said all members enjoyed improved health and wellbeing as a result of their efforts.

Apart from Mr Doulton, who works across all Monash campuses, the rest of the team were Caulfield campus staff. They were Ms Jill Grogan, Dr Bala Balachandran, Ms Margaret Croxford, Ms Louise Oliaro, Mr Peter Lausch, Ms Rosemary Demirtas and Ms Lorraine Foxall.