THE AMERICA ONE NEWS
Jun 12, 2025  |  
0
 | Remer,MN
Sponsor:  QWIKET 
Sponsor:  QWIKET 
Sponsor:  QWIKET: Elevate your fantasy game! Interactive Sports Knowledge.
Sponsor:  QWIKET: Elevate your fantasy game! Interactive Sports Knowledge and Reasoning Support for Fantasy Sports and Betting Enthusiasts.
back  
topic
David Sivak


NextImg:Team Thune takes first place in Capitol Hill fitness challenge

Team Thune has won bragging rights in a fitness challenge so close that less than 10 minutes of exercise initially separated its next closest competitor, the office of Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL).

Staffers for Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) logged the highest average points, at 11,913, using a heartbeat monitor that tracked physical activity in May, according to the event organizer.

Recommended Stories

In a separate award category for total points, which does not consider team size, staffers for Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) took first place.

Thune’s office beat out 20 other teams in a rollercoaster competition that took more than a week to “recount.” The victory matches the unofficial results reported in the app, but there were some discrepancies over what average points should be included and when the devices stopped collecting data.

Staffers for the top-performing offices exercised until the last seconds of May 31, according to a spokesperson for the Physical Activity Alliance, forcing the device company, MyZone, to manually review the results before a winner could be declared.

According to one Scott staffer, several teammates had zero recorded points on the final day due to a “flawed system.”

The organizer did not provide a full breakdown of the new leaderboard, only sharing the winner for each of the four categories with the Washington Examiner. However, the updated total ended days of speculation over whether Team Thune would retain its lead.

In the final days of the race, it narrowly overtook Scott’s office, with just 26 MyZone points separating the two teams in unofficial results.

The average points score is intended to even out the difference in team size between different offices, but an award is also given for total points.

The Physical Activity Alliance confirmed that Lummis staffers took first in that category, protecting a title they have held for three years in a row. The team logged 231,541 points in May, up from the 194,844 recorded in 2024.

“I’m proud that Team Lummis has once again won most points in the Congressional Fitness Challenge,” said Lummis, who personally participates in the challenge. “It’s great that so many offices competed hard this year and improved their physical health.”

A congressional staffer wears a Myzone watch as part of the Congressional Physical Activity Challenge. (David Sivak/Washington Examiner)

A third award, given to the team with the most participants, will go to the majority staff on the House Oversight Committee, which recruited 25 members to compete in the challenge.

In the individual category, Mark Marin on the Oversight Committee staff won the most points, 33,411, of any single competitor.

The challenge, now in its fifth year, has become a friendly but, at times, rivalrous way to encourage exercise and good health. Participants could see how they compare in and outside their offices using an app and even share their workouts. 

THE RED FITNESS WATCH CHALLENGE THAT’S KEEPING CAPITOL HILL ACTIVE

Similar to Orange Theory, the challenge buckets heart rates into five different intensity zones, with red awarded the most.

In unofficial results, Lummis’s team took third place for average points, followed by staffers for House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) office.