For the past two years, the Dermatology and Skin Cancer Center has made an organizational commitment to personal fitness. Last year, its team of five posted respectable gains in improved health and earned a seventh-place team finish in overall health in the first Fittest Execs and Fittest Companies Challenge.
If they’re back for a third year, look out: A wholesale effort to raise their personal scores paid off for the only one of 34 teams that placed the same five members back into competition in the 2010 Challenge. The progress was not only measurable, but impressive: Team DSCC racked up average gains of 16.20 points each on its way to claiming the title of Fittest Team for 2010–11. Those gains helped generate a final average score of 138, just over three points ahead of the the Gates Hospitalists team.
Leading the charge was Steve Plumb, whose 32-point health-score improvement between August and December was the fourth-largest among the 181 contestants who finished the competition. His performance alone accounted for more than a third of team’s improvement, and Tamera Wolf produced an impressive 20-point gain, as well. Teamwork, said Glenn Goldstein, had much to do with their success. “By being on a team, I did not want to let down my colleagues,” he said. “We all focused on being the best.” Done. His own improvements were a sort of sugar-free icing on a low-cal cake, coming on top of the 20 pounds he lost between the inaugural 2009 program and this past one. Joyce Goldstein, who snared the title of Fittest Woman Under 50, was last year’s co-winner in the Most-Improved Category, when she shared that title with Stacey Gates, business manager for Gates Hospitalists. And the two again found themselves neck-and-neck for the Fittest Woman title this year. Goldstein attributed her success this year to an extensive regimen of scuba diving, snorkeling, snow skiing, treadmill work, outdoor running, yoga and working out twice a week with a trainer.
The team started with one leg up on the title with the strategic decision to include Mark Fleischman, who last year claimed an adjusted-score title of Fittest Man Under 50. As an Iron Man competitor, running distances most of us take in only through a windshield, Fleischman ended this year’s competition with a 145-point score on a 150-point scale. 
