We'll be using the ST challenge function. That's the whole point of hosting the challenge here! By the way, you can complain about the features of the ST training log, but unfortunately Rapp lost access to the developer who built the function so there will be no added features at least for a while.

no worries, as I said to devlin, i didn't realize there was a challenge function!! and I can't bitch anymore, I've been doing enough at work this year. i'll leave you alone. thanks guys

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The Rat Snake:
A Tribute Race at Gilbert Lake State Park, Laurens, NY May 16 2015
Follow the Rat Snake on Twitter

Bottle of wine?

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Proud member of the MSF (Maple Syrup Mafia)

Bottle of red....bottle of white. All depends upon your appetite.

John

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Top notch coaching: Francois and Accelerate3 | Follow on Twitter: LifetimeAthlete |

Sounds good

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Today is the second day of the rest of your life if you started keeping track yesterday

A couple years ago I did a stupid workout contest to see who did the dumbest workout just to get in the mileage. Bernie circled his firestation 40+ times and someone else did a run in China (?) in chocking smog that almost killed him. The China runner won and I sent him a bottle of Sport Wash. That ended up being fun too.

May be time to resurrect that one. Another bottle of Sport Wash on the line.

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Jen

"In order to keep a true perspective on one's importance, everyone should have a dog that worships him and a cat that will ignore him." - Dereke Bruce

That sounds pretty good too. Bottle of wine and some sport wash.

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Today is the second day of the rest of your life if you started keeping track yesterday

Hrm. Might be interesting to tier it. People all pitch in *something*, and prize packs get randomly assigned to the 90+, 80+, 70+ ranges. There are people that won't and don't intend to make 100 runs, but they may make 91. or 80.

So, if you make 75 runs, you are eligible for the 70+ tier but not the 80+.

John

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Top notch coaching: Francois and Accelerate3 | Follow on Twitter: LifetimeAthlete |

Way too complicated. Sport Wash for being ridiculous. Wine for kicking ass.

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Jen

"In order to keep a true perspective on one's importance, everyone should have a dog that worships him and a cat that will ignore him." - Dereke Bruce

So....it's a ridiculous idea. I get teh sports wash. :D

John

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Top notch coaching: Francois and Accelerate3 | Follow on Twitter: LifetimeAthlete |

Just replying to the thread. I just checked my totals for Nov and it was 27 runs for 280K, however, some of those runs were 20 minute runs. I think it is reasonable to try to get in the 800-900K range for the challenge off 80-90 "legal" runs. This month was encouraging, because for the first time in 15 months or so I have been doing speed work (relative term, but fast for me) and lots of hill running.

I have an outside goal of running to the summit of Mauna Kea next year from the visitor centre. That is 7 miles uphill starting at 9300 feet above sea level ending at 13700. That is 12% grade average, but the bottom half is more like 15-17%. We'll see, but I'm doing a lot of uphill treadmill runs to prepare over the next year. I ran two of those 7 miles this year and it took me half an hour just to cover that distance (15 min miles)

Dev

That's reasonable. I did 444 miles off of 71 runs last year, and that puts me right at 710k.

John

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Top notch coaching: Francois and Accelerate3 | Follow on Twitter: LifetimeAthlete |

That's what's BS. You ran, it should count. Especially those going for high frequency instead of volume. Now I can see making 20 min the lowest counting standard but 30 min is complete bull shit, especially since you are adding that time into tomorrow's run making 50min a 70min run. How fucked up is that?

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Hey Brian, I agree, but the rules were established a few years ago and they have worked to get people to run a bit more than they might normally run. Even if you run less than 30 minutes in a day, your body knows the difference, even though this challenge won't know the difference, and in the end, I think we can agree that what happens to your body is more important than what happens on the challenge spreadsheet!

But I am glad you are participating in airing the grievances related to the rules. Some of them suck and we should spend 2 weeks whining about them and getting them out of our system before we actually do any real training :-)

True, but it does exclude anyone that doesn't have good base, coming back from injury, things of that nature. If you have someone starting out on the BarryP plan at 20/40/60 mins, they would only be able to count 3 out of 6 runs. Kind of defeats the purpose of the challenge, which is to get people out running. Sure, they could run an extra 10 minutes on the 20 days, but for a 9 min/mile runner that's ~ 4.5 miles extra, on a weekly of 21ish. That's a pretty significant increase.

Is the purpose to get people out running? Or simply to provide a brag point for the already accomplished among the forum crowd? Just because rules were established, doesn't mean they can't be revisited. Hell, major sports organizations have rule changes almost every year.

John

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Top notch coaching: Francois and Accelerate3 | Follow on Twitter: LifetimeAthlete |

Hell...even the crazies over at Streak Runner's International only require a single mile (or 1.61 Km) in a day.

http://www.runeveryday.com/

Holy crap! 16202 days in a row?!?

Even if it was only one mile each day, that's 2/3 around the Earth. Guaranteed he's actually made it around the earth at least once...

John

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Top notch coaching: Francois and Accelerate3 | Follow on Twitter: LifetimeAthlete |

I think I'm in for the first time. However PF Changs Marathon and Tough Mudder (both AZ) are right in the middle and I'm overweight and under trained. This could have a severe level of suckiness but I'm game for just about anything.

I think the middle east had a small uprising based upon similar management style.

besides this is something that has been brought up every year about this challenge. Maybe management should listen to the workers?

Which brings me back to my original point early in the thread.

Why even have this farce 2 weeks if nothing is going to change?

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

Brian,

I see the airing of the grievances are in full throttle, which is good to see (By the way Brian, we'd love for you to actually participate for a free event that you're more than welcome to complain about....you get what you pay for....). The thread is not about changing the rules, it's just fun complaining about them (seriously, I complain about them too).

Trust me, I'd like to change the minimum to 15 minutes, but that would just be self serving because I am not ready to run 30 minutes minimum for 100 days in a row, but I am ready to do 15 minutes.

The reason for not budging on this is that the challenge is also supposed to be tough (not saying that 100 x 15 minutes is not tough, it is just that 100x 30 minutes is actually quite a bit tougher). No one is stopping us from doing days that are 15 minutes and just not getting credit (it won't kill us to not get credit for something on a spreadsheet sitting on a server in the cloud....in the end it's just some bits sitting on a hard drive in the cloud...your body does not know the difference on what those bits say).

I think that after 5 years of this, we've seen that overall the minimum has provided a nice balance between pushing people a bit, and also getting them out for higher frequency than they would like.

We're all more than welcome to run less day than 100 (there are several levels) or on some days less than 30 min and not get credit. It won't kill us to not get credit on a challenge....listen to our bodies and listen to the plan from the coach and do what our bodies are ready for....use the spreadsheet as a motivator when we are feeling lazy, but don't use it as a motivator to break our bodies.... the latter being the bad type.

The reason we complain is because we don't like it. Pretty consistently, the biggest complaint has been the 30 minute rule.

John

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Top notch coaching: Francois and Accelerate3 | Follow on Twitter: LifetimeAthlete |

Exactly. 20 minutes is a 5k a day. 30 minutes is an injury. And for short course guys 5k is long enough

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I'll be rollicking at the Challenge Penticton after party when all our racing bets are to be paid in full..

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Ok how about this ...

A beer for the swim
A beer for T1
A beer for the bike
A beer for T2
A beer for the Run
A beer for overall.

I could use a free six pack ;)

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Proud member of the MSF (Maple Syrup Mafia)

I agree, the 30 min rule has been the biggest complaint, but we don't like the last 6 miles of the 26 mile run in an Ironman, yet many return every year. So on the one hand, on threads like these we see the squeeky wheel complaints, including my own (really guys, I am very happy running 10 min too)...but on the other hand, the yearly sign ups suggest that many like the challenge being slightly hard.

So we are playing a fine balance between bragging rights in a virtual training camp and fitness gains and trying to be both inclusive while at the same time, rewarding people for pushing themselves a bit too. That's why we have all the other level which encourage us to take days off if we need them.