Nearly 1,900 participate in Institute's annual fitness challenge
MIT Medical's annual getfit@mit fitness challenge kicked off in mid-January.
The 2006 challenge, for teams of five to eight people, featured steadily
increasing exercise goals for the 11-week program, starting at 150 minutes
and ending with 300. 
Weekly prizes were awarded by random drawing to
individuals and teams meeting that week's goal. Additional special team
competitions were also part of the challenge. All teams with an exercise
average meeting the weekly minimum threshold for at least nine of the
11 weeks were entered in an end-of-the-challenge drawing for the grand
prize.
Showing off their getfit@mit tee-shirts and muscles, the Fat-2-Fit team could have won a prize for our "furthest flung participants." Part of the production team for MIT's Open Courseware program, the India-based team racked up more than 30,000 exercise minutes and reached the weekly exercise thresholds for all eleven weeks.
Fat-2-Fit was only one of 263 teams participating in the 2006 challenge. Slightly more than half of this year's 1,900 participants identified themselves as "MIT staff," and about a quarter of participants were students, almost evenly split between undergrads and graduate students. The remaining participants came from other sectors of the community, including faculty, affiliates, and family members.
