Well what a week we have had! We felt a huge sense of achievement as the LifeLab team successfully completed their #LifeLabGoesWalking challenge to mark National Fitness Day.

We decided to practice what we preach and set ourselves the goal of walking to the furthest school to have signed up to the LifeLab project – which turned out to be in Birmingham!

We gave ourselves a week to do it, combining all our collective steps, captured on LifeLab fitness trackers, the same ones we use in our Early LifeLab programme to show how many active minutes are being notched up.

As we set off, our team had some thoughts about how they felt about the 130 mile challenge. Donna, who delivers the LifeLab teaching, said: “Excited! It’s a good thing I have a conveniently timed half marathon while we are completing the challenge.”

Hannah, our Early LifeLab lead said: “I’m looking forward to putting all the steps I do running after a toddler to good use!”

Kate, lead for attainment for LifeLab, said she was: “Really excited to see how far we can go! The school run will be put to good use!” Lisa Bagust, who also delivers LifeLab teaching, said her fitbit was charged and ready to go!

Claire our technician said she would be mostly dancing her way through it, while Sian, who supports with communications, was just hoping her knees held out for the duration. Kath, our programme leader found a way to combine the steps with expanding her mind. She said: “I am looking forward to having a chance to listen to Sarah Jayne Blakemore’s fabulous book ‘Inventing ourselves; the secret life of the teenage brain’ whilst I’m walking up to Brum!”

We actually made it in record time to Nelson Mandela Primary School, who were also midway through their own activity challenge. They had set themselves the goal of combining the miles they accumulated through their mile a day initiative to make it down to Southampton and visit us here in LifeLab.

We must have virtually past them somewhere on the A34!!

As we had exceeded our own walking expectations we thought rather than call it a day, we would simply extend the challenge to take us around Birmingham and visit some more schools who have also recently signed up to the LifeLab programme.

The City of Birmingham (COB) school campuses are spread out across the city and gave us another 26 miles to add to our total before we started heading back to Southampton, which we managed to hit bang on time in the middle of National Fitness Day last Wednesday. We celebrated with a mass workout joined by our visiting students from Havant Academy who threw themselves into the challenge and gave us some much needed support as we entered the home straight.

The day was a great celebration of the value of fitness and activity and one that we wholeheartedly embraced by the LifeLab community.