For the last two years, the YMCA chapters in Tampa and Jacksonville have competed to see who could rack up the most miles on treadmills. They’ve each won one, so this year’s Treadmill Tuesday competition will be important for a number of reasons.
“The overall purpose is to encourage healthier lifestyles for Tampa Bay residents,” said Linda Llerna, Communications Director for YMCA Tampa. “Last year we won by 21 miles and we had a total of 1,630 residents complete 3,358 miles over the 12 hour event, the year prior we lost to Jacksonville by 176 miles so this year is the third year but it’s also the tie-breaker.”
During Tuesday’s competition, anyone can attend a Tampa YMCA and walk, jog or run on a treadmill for half an hour. YMCA trainers will be logging in everyone’s time, and you can take part from home or another gym. Participants can take a picture of the treadmill dashboard showing how much they walked in 30 minutes and tag it with #TreadmillTuesday and @TampaYMCA. The event starts at 6:30 am and runs until 6:30 pm.
“This event also happens to fall on Diabetes Alert Day so we are encouraging healthy living while promoting friendly competition,” Llerna said. “We are going to have Tampa YMCA trainers offer free diabetes risk assessments to Treadmill Tuesday participants at any Y and those who qualify will be entered to win a free diabetes prevention program class.”
In 2016, according to the Florida Department of Health, 13.2% of adults in Hillsborough County had been told they have diabetes. In Duval County, it was 11.3%.
Llerna is hoping Tampa can repeat as the treadmill champion by topping last year’s results.
“Nearly 2,000 (participants) would be great and we are hoping to login a lot more miles in than we did last year as well,” Llerna said. “Last year we logged in 3,358 so this year if we could log 4,000 that would be awesome.”
