Photo courtesy of Halcyon House

As part of a fitness challenge at work, one Halcyon House employee racked up 566,439 steps in just 10 days.

The goal was for employees to reach the 100,000 step mark. Jeanette Lackender averaged 18 miles of walking each day. To put that in perspective, that’s about 10 miles more than walking from Halcyon House to Keokuk, then across the Mississippi River to Nauvoo, Illinois, and back the same route to Washington.

Employees were given FitBits to wear and track their activity, during which Lackender said she was surprised at how many steps she tallied up at work and decided to push herself, “What I found was, I felt so much better. So what I did was at first I went by the recommended 10,000, and I thought well that’s not good for me because I can get that easily, especially if I’m working.”

She has some advice for people who may not currently exercise, or do so minimally, “I would challenge people to do that (walk regularly), because I think they’d be surprised if they just start at slow, just by walking. And then maybe adding a little jogging here and there. I think they’d be surprised at how much better they felt.”

Some days during the challenge she got up at 4 a.m. to get extra steps in. Her plan now is to keep up a regimen of 20,000 to 30,000 steps daily. To hear more about Lackender’s experience listen to the Washington Page.