I just found out yesterday that I won prizes too. I got 3 personal training sessions, and 1 month membership to a climbing gym. Those will be fun to cash in on.
One thing that helped me win is that we earned points for eating a Whole Foods Plant-Based diet! I also improved my fitness, attended the classes regularly, converted some body fat to muscle, and took a lot of yoga classes, all of which earned points. The best thing I learned from the challenge was that, by golly, I can improve! Our classes are repeated 3 times each month. Before the challenge, I was content with just showing up to class and getting through it. Now I log my exercise, time, weight, etc, and try to improve each time the class is repeated. I made some substantial improvements in areas that surprised me, like some challenging core exercises and weights. I had a mindset that I'm weak and there is nothing to be done about it but now I'm thinking I can get a little bit stronger.
Now I have a new challenge. I'm hoping to do a backpacking trip next fall that I had to cancel this fall. So I signed up to climb the Hancock building in Chicago on Feb. 25. That's 94 floors. I started training about 3 weeks ago with my basement stairs. I started with 10 flights in a day and am increasing by 1 flight a day. I'm up to 32 flights right now. Fun tools to help me with that are my clicker and my stair log posted on the refrigerator.
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Here are the stairs that I am becoming close personal friends with:
