As someone who has done a lot of actual races, I kind of scorned virtual challenges. But then I found a few that appealed to me. There was a go-at-your-own-pace 220-mile virtual run around the Big Island of Hawaii. It was a fundraiser for a food bank in Hawaii and a friend was offering a discount, so it wasn’t much to pay. Some people wrapped it up in a few weeks of high mileage, I took nearly the full three months of rehab run/walking to finish it, June-September.

Then in early October, I did the Ironman in a week challenge from Ironman virtual racing club. It was free to enter, no swag unless you’re the kind to buy your race shirt. I got several of my friends to do it too. I used the same miles for the Hawaii From Home challenge from Triathlon Magazine. Both challenges were during the one-week runup to what would have been the Ironman World Triathlon Championships. Again, it was go at your own pace, and you could divide the event up into whatever segments you chose. I took some vacation time I had cancelled that would have been for Ironman Wisconsin and used it to complete this challenge.

Beyond that, I’m not really one to pay money for runs I do on my own. But I appreciate that these challenges can keep people motivated.

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Sharon McN
@IronCharo
#TeamZoot
Clif Bar Pace Team 2003-2018

Just a note from your Friendly Training Log Guy:

There are lots of kinds of challenges that we have not yet implemented. I have a few ideas beyond basic tallies of volume, distance, time, or whatever:

For example, say we did a virtual race series where we would require a swim, a bike, and a run of a certain distance to be logged on the same day, and the combined time would be your leaderboard position. Could be full IM, half, olympic, or whatever. We could require that they not be separated by too much time (allow up to 15 minutes for transition, say), we could allow a window of time for putting your performances in, and this could become a virtual leaderboard for a race and definitely a challenge to pursue.

Thoughts?

-Eric

Yes, please. :-)

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Hillary Trout
San Luis Obispo, CA

Your trip is short. Make the most of it.
https://www.slogoing.net/

Hey Eric,

What about a weekly virtual Swim - Run/Aquabike

Two events

• 750m swim + 5 km run
• 1500m swim + 10km run

Enter all your workouts in all sports and the training log just picks your two fastest workouts in each sport that meets the minimum distance. Forget about biking, its all bogus stuff online anyway and too hard to normalize and compare. Swim and run will always be semi legit.


Dev