Lee's Day Off

Bloggers Note - this is a fictional story told from the perspective of a co-worker.

It was just another typical Friday morning at work.  As I went about my tasks I needed some information from Lee so I sent him a quick email.  I immediately received an out-of-office response.  As I looked at the response I heard myself take a deep sigh.  Why would I care if Lee was out of the office on a gorgeous day?  Allow me explain. 

Our work began offering a very cool wellness program last year.  It focuses on all aspects of living well such as nutrition, physical exercise, emotional well-being, and even finances.  A big part of the program is completing challenges for points, which can be redeemed for gift cards.  While some challenges change every 6-8 weeks, other challenges last all year.  One such challenge is to complete 180 minutes of exercise each week.

Lee actually manages this program and he knows that some of us like the added motivation of some friendly competition.  In that light, the 180-minute challenge is also a competition to see who can log the most minutes by the end of the year.  Both the winner and runner up will receive very nice gift cards.

This was the cause of my deep sigh.  If Lee has the day off he’s probably exercising.  I take a quick look at the leaderboard for this challenge and see that Lee is in 10th place with 2,828 minutes this year.  I’m currently in 7th so I have him beat for now.  But, he is a cyclist and a runner and as the weather gets nicer he will begin to log 4-6 hour rides each weekend so I need a solid buffer.  I may have also made the mistake of telling him earlier this year that I would definitely beat him.

I sneak a peak at his Facebook page - Lee’s Life Adventure - and there’s nothing posted.  So far, so good!  Maybe he has a doctor’s appointment or something and that’s why he took the day off.  I don’t want him to feel bad, I just don’t want him exercising while I’m working.

An hour later I looked at Facebook again and my heart sank.  He had just finished an 11-mile run that gave him 109 minutes.  Damn!  That was double the 55 minutes I spend at Cross Fit that morning.  But even worse, he stated he was at The Pharmacy, a cool little shop with coffee and great food, refueling for his ride later in the day.

As the day went on I found myself frequently checking Facebook.  For a while I was holding on to the hope that the ride wouldn’t happen.  That hope faded when I saw another post stating he had just finished a 36-mile ride and was having lunch at The Trail House.  That ride gave him another 160 minutes, which meant a total of 269 minutes for the day.  I’ll spare you from doing the math and simply tell you that’s basically 4 1/2 hours.

I went back to the leader board of the 180-minute challenge to see that Lee was now in 6th place with 3,097 points.  Plus, it was now the weekend which meant he still had another 2 days to keep adding to this total before coming to wok on Monday.

I’ve thought of starting a petition that since Lee manages the wellness program, he should not be allowed to win but I’m pretty sure that if I did that Karma would kick my ass even harder.  So, I’ll settle for some honest competition and all the trash talking that comes with it.  In the meantime, I’m going for a run!

Cheers!