130 accepted Hike it or Bike it Challenge in RR

By Ken Johnston
Editor

The citizens of Rainy River were up for the challenge!
The Northwestern Health Unit (Rainy River office) issued the “Hike it or Bike it Challenge” in the spring and were pleasantly surprised at the response. Heidi Ivall of NWHU said, “We had hoped for 50 and when 130 signed up it was over the top!
The challenge was to do 150 minutes of physical activity per week for six weeks. “Our goal was to get people active on foot or on wheels,” said Ivall. The challenge began June 18th and ran until July 29th. Each week participants kept track of their daily physical activities.
“We wanted to come up with something that emphasized the new government physical activity guidelines. This seemed to work well,” said Ivall. The new guidelines recommend adults get 150 minutes of activity per week and that kids get 60 minutes per day. “I myself try to do a half hour per day,” said Ivall.
As an incentive the NWHU purchased two bicycles to give away to participants. At the end of the challenge all who had turned in their records of activity were entered into a random draw. Tyler Pater, 5, and adult Deb Spence were the lucky winners!
As in both Pater and Spence’s cases family members took on the challenge. Ivall said there were many families “getting active” this summer because of the challenge. “We are very pleased that the challenge was so successful in getting people to be (more) active,” Ivall concluded.
Ivall noted that over the winter months they will continue with local activities to keep people doing physical activities such as badminton nights at the school and help out with outdoor rink activities as well.