So last week, my company started this new health initiative called Virgin HealthMiles. It’s apparently run at least somewhat in conjunction with our health insurer. Anyone else ever heard of this?

The basic idea is that you wear this special pedometer that tracks the number of steps that you do in a given day. You get points (they call them “miles”) for doing various things, chief of which is different activities, like getting at least 7000 steps in a day. Once you reach certain levels of miles, they give you money. The more you do, the more you make. The pedometers come with a USB cable and some software that automatically uploads your steps to Virgin’s website.

My company was giving out these pedometers to the first 400 people that signed up (normally they are $24.99 each) so naturally I scored one. You can get up to $150 a year by doing this. There are 5 levels and you get different amounts of cash for reaching each level. Level 1 is where you start out and is worth $0, then $25, $25, $50 and $50 I believe. It looks like the 5th level might be a bit hard to get, though we shall see.

They also have an “upgraded” membership which you can sign up for $6.99/mo. With that membership, you can earn up to $500/year. I think the levels are $0, $25, $125, $175, and $175. So if you can make it to level 3 (which is 12,000 “miles”), the upgraded membership pays for itself. After like a week, I’m at 3910 miles, though they give you lots of bonus miles when you first start out so I don’t think I’ll be able to keep up that pace. Still, Level 3 seems pretty reachable. I’m already almost to Level 2 (6,000 “miles”). You have up to 60 days to convert your membership so I’ll be seeing where I’m at around Day 58 but I expect that I’ll be upgrading at that point.

The other thing is that a few of us here at work that got the pedometers are having a little step-competition. We were trying to figure out what kind of ground rules that we could make to discourage cheating. It turns out that the website lets you set up challenges. These challenges allow you to set up teams as well as handicaps (to allow people at different step levels to compete on even ground). We have set one up but the system doesn’t seem to be working correctly.

I’m not sure if this is open to the general public or not – you’d certainly have to pay the $6.99/mo and the $25 for the pedometer, but even still, if you’re moderately active, it could be worth it. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.