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Your arms might be hurting as you're reading this. And you might be wondering why, exactly, you're doing all these pullups every day this month at Farmgirlfit. Sure, it's for Farmgirlfit’s Pennies for Pullups drive. But it's also for something a lot bigger.

The pennies from every pullup you do doing the month of October will go to a place here in Spokane called St. Margaret's Shelter.  St. Margaret's, a program of Catholic Charities, gives women hope in times when they might not have any. The program provides 18 small apartments within the shelter for homeless women and their families. While they live there, women receive individual help: be it for life skills, parenting skills or job skills. Many of the women living there are escaping situations of domestic violence, and are finally given respite and security at St. Margaret's.

In addition, the women of St. Margaret's also run the Vinegar Flats Community Garden — a plot of land on Latah Creek. Through the garden, women from St. Margaret's learn how to garden, and grow food that is then sold weekly at the Thursday South Perry Farmer's Market. St. Margaret's staff aims to empower women through the garden, teaching them not only valuable life skills but how to keep their families — and communities — healthy.

It's not too late to start doing pullups for St. Margaret’s. If you haven’t started, here's how it works:

1. Do pullups each day you come to Farmgirlfit, and the number of pull-ups you do corresponds to the date.  So on October 1, members did 1 pullup; on October 2, 2 pullups; on October 3, 3 pullups; and so on until October 31 — when we challenge you to do 31 pullups. A member who completes all of the pullups, will do 496 pullups over the course of the month.

2. You may make up pullups for days that you’ve missed, however, you cannot jump ahead to do pullups for a day in the future.  If a member comes in for the first time on October 3, they can do 6 pullups to account for the 3rd, and to make up for the 1st and 2nd.  However, they cannot do 10 pullups on the 3rd and have the additional 4 pull-ups counted toward their total.

3. For each pullup that you complete, Farmgirlfit will donate 1 penny to St. Margaret's.  We are also challenging our members to seek out other sponsors so that we can increase the donation to St. Margaret’s Shelter.  We encourage sponsors to pledge whatever they can.  Whether the donation you pledge is in the form of a pledge per pullup (like we are doing at Farmgirlfit) or in the form of a fixed donation (e.g., $10 no matter how many pullups the member does), we welcome any amount that you are able to donate.

4. ALL pullups need to be completed in your 10 minute personal warm-up or after your daily Grind is completed. If the daily Grind requires pullups, you may count those towards your daily requirement or days missed- but remember, you cannot skip ahead in days!

As you have probably noticed, the challenge is starting to get pretty tricky now in the middle of October :) If you are trying to complete every single days’ worth of pull-ups, you can stop by the gym during any of our classes (even on days that you don’t plan on scanning in to work out) and complete these! You must complete them at Farmgirlfit in order for them to count for the fundraiser.