The Olympic Challenge

With the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony a few hours away the athletes are gearing themselves up for their shot at Olympic gold. For many of us however the challenge for the summer will be to lose a little weight before we head off to the beach or increase to our fitness levels. While the Olympic glory is there for only a few the feeling of success and personnel achievement should be the same for everyone.

During the Olympics we’re encouraging you to join in with our Olympic challenge, the challenge is to complete a 20 minute walk for every Gold medal team GB wins.

In Beijing 2008 Team GB won 19 gold medals, if they achieve the same again this summer we’ll be walking for 380 minutes (5 hours, 20 minutes) which equates to around 1150 calories. Walking is one of the easiest ways to help improve your fitness, assist with a weight loss programme and can be done almost anywhere.

You can keep track of your progress by using our calorie calculator in conjunction with a pedometer, not only will this give you the calories you have burned it will also give you the distance you have walked.

We’ll be on hand to keep you up to date with Team GB’s progress with tweets and Facebook posts so be sure to follow us so you don’t miss out. In addition to this we will be giving you some great fitness ideas as well as recipe tips. We would also love to hear about your Olympic challenge success stories as we celebrate a fantastic summer of walking.