Homer Steps Up is an annual community walking challenge for the Southern Kenai Peninsula sponsored by South Peninsula Hospital. Every May, before the blur of summer, participants track daily walks with a smartphone app, wearable fitness tracker, or pedometer to win prizes and keep track of daily distance travelled. This is the 10th anniversary of the event. Many participants are members of teams that also let the teams track team step scores. This year there were 680 participants and over 80 teams, according to Annie Garay, event coordinator and community health and wellness educator for South Peninsula Hospital. At the end of the month-long event, participants met for an event celebration at the Homer Chamber of Commerce lawn on Thursday evening. The event hosted music, a door prize drawings for visitors and announced first, second and third place winners for the most steps. Before announcing winning teams, Garay introduced the event to the crowd.
“Walking is one of the most accessible and powerful forms of movement. It has the lowest dropout rate out of any physical activity, because it's free, it requires no special equipment, and it can be done just about anywhere, especially right now in a world that moves really quickly with the inundation of our smartphones and news and headlines and tasks. Walking is a really nice way to slow down, connect with our surroundings, with one another, and ourselves.”
The top three teams choose a local non-profit to donate winning funds to, the funds are sponsored by South Peninsula Hospital in denominations of $500, $300 and $100. This year the first and second place teams donated their award to Homer Animal Friends and the third place donation went to South Peninsula Haven House.
“Some of the best feedback I got was from a group of gals who came. They were all part of the Safeway Bakery. They were all co-workers, and they joined the challenge for the first time and just conveyed that it was a way for them to kind of like build teamwork and connect outside of work, and just how much fun they all had…the biggest takeaway I think is like the connection and community that the challenge provides. It's a way for people to really just come out of winter, out of isolation and find connection with their community,” Garay said.
After this event, the hospital scales back on their community outreach just because there is so much more going on.
“In the fall, as the light starts to start to diminish and the weather gets cooler, we start to bring people back together and back inside for events, so there are a couple things throughout the summer, like in later summer we'll do a senior wellness day, but that's towards August, so you'll be seeing seeing promo and marketing for that, probably in mid July,” Garay said.
If participants want to continue counting and keeping track of steps now that they’re used to it, the app will be available for a bit longer for personal use. And, Homer Steps Up will be hosted again by the hospital at the start of the 2027 summer.
Reporting from Homer, this is Emilie Springer.
