Challenge fairness

Why should it be cheating? If I did a Challenge with the purpose to win, I'd avoid syncing the last day until the last moment, while doing a really big walk (i.e. a 50k steps walk is a good way to assure your rank), and syncing only shortly before midnight (in fact you have time till the noon of the next day, but I find it safer syncing before midnight anyway). It is not clear to me why you consider it to be cheating. It is just a tactics.

In my opinion it's not a challenge at that point. My understanding is that a challenge pushes people to move more. I get your point, but it's sandbagging and defeats the spirit of a straight forward challenge. 

Oppositely, I think, exacty this is the challnege - it pushes to do more than you'd normally do, since you are uncertain what others can do within the short time. So if you want to win, you really need to push the boundaries.

However, I do not quite understand why you bother about not winning - the purpose of the Chalenge is exactly as you wrote to make you doing more, so whether you finish the 1st, the 2nd, or the last is actaully irrelevant. What is important is the participation and the effort, not the rank - even if you finish the first, you do not get any reward anyway. The only "reward" you can gain, is being promoted to a higher level of Steps Chalenge (i.e. from the 100k to the 125k level), but again - it does not matter whether you won or not. It only matters whether you surpassed the threshold of your current level sufficiently, to be promoted.

I agree with you but I think I should have been more clear. My complaint is with the people who hold their steps for 6 days while creeping the challenge. It's lame