Magma Took Us for a Walk

Magma block challenged all advisory groups to join in a walking competition. The call was, Count your steps from November 5 through December 4.

Regular walking is the best exercise for our general wellbeing, and it has another benefit, too - it can help heal our planet. One of the goals of Magma's challenge to the ACS community was to create awareness about our daily physical activity and the carbon footprint we all make.

Starting seemed easy enough: Just install the "Pacer" app, available for iOS and Android, and start walking already. The Pacer app allows the accumulation of statistics about steps per the last 30 days.

As you might have noticed, December 4 came and went, and then Petya Nenova '21 announced the results.

Our new role model is Kaloyan Yanchev 9/5. He recorded the highest individual score of the challenge, at 425,912 steps. While this number seems mind-boggling, Kalyoan turned out to be a very kind and modest guy who humbly declined to have his picture taken and framed on this web site.

At the recognition ceremony on December 20, special guest Santa Claus gave out the prize for the team with the most participants to Magma 1, Class of 2022, and the award for highest team results to Magma 8, class of 2020. Then there was cake!

The advisor of the activity, Dr. Ganka Dineva, put the challenge in perspective: the participants walked 60% of what is the optimal number of steps one should take per day. So next time, please people, get serious and show those feet who's boss.