Yeah, sorry, but count me as somebody who would change the rules of the challenge if he ran it.

Minimum run should be 20 minutes. And the only thing that matters is whether or not you hit that 20 minutes of running per day. All of the other stuff (distance, multiple runs, all that jazz) is noise.

The goal is 100 runs in 100 days. Distance doesn't matter. Time matters. Focus on run consistency and run consistency only. And we just about every year during this have people who drop off hard in the first two weeks after they try to hold to the 30 or 3 mile rule. It's just enough to be an overreach.

In fact, I'm pretty sure at least one of our free training plans on offer on TrainingPeaks has 15 minute run days built into it -- because it's about making it to the end having improved your run durability, not blowing up a couple of days in.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

Would this be a good idea for a guy who can swim and bike but struggles with running?

I have been looking for a way to focus on running to help get back to a good place after an injury. Running has been a problem for me for the last few years

The free plans will be offered again next month?

still have in my library the 14 week plan by jen i. but still not accessible as of the moment

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"Pain is NOT temporary,you remember every bit of it"

I don't know if they're going to be available again. Would need to ask those coaches.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

appreciate it, the one by jen is very good and doable while DD`s program`s for the ones who have the miles already in the bank.

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"Pain is NOT temporary,you remember every bit of it"

Whoa! You triggered me a little bit there

I got "jen i" confused with "iJen"

https://forum.slowtwitch.com/...ost=4092051#p4092051

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

I like the idea of rule 13... But let's go further .. limit it to be "1 day of running". So the spill over rule is still in effect, but no one can over 100 run day efforts in 100 days.

No big deal , I always find it interesting to know a little bit about people on Slowtwitch and especially in a Challenge situation. Somehow, can people list their age next to their name? I suppose maybe, optional. In this way when you see a Slowtwitch alias name you can kind of size them up a little as a real person. Whatever.

I'm trying to figure out who belongs to the IG handles that keep coming up as "Who you might know" because they don't always match the screen names here

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Well that is why it is a challenge and not a cakewalk. 30 min daily is enough to break people who did not prepare going in, but its almost nothing for a well organized well trained athlete.

It's like an Ironman....its not meant to be easy....and you may break yourself getting to the start line or during the race, but that is precisely what makes things a challenge and not a cakewalk and part of the attraction is that it is not really that easy. If it was easy everyone would do it, and as you have not been around for 15 years, part of the reason why it has lasted for that long is because there is a feeling of accomplishment when you get 100 done (I cant remember you doing it, but maybe missed you in the standings).

But also there is a daily feeling of accomplishment getting 30 min done....and 30 min is half of 1 hour. It is basically one meeting slot in business life to carve out for yourself.

Yes, some people will break, or its too hard for some people and that is perfectly OK. No one is forcing anyone to go to the point that they break themselves. Breaking oneself in a challenge is completely voluntary as no one is forcing us into anything. That's actually part of getting faster in any sport...pushing your limit and figuring out when and how to back off.

But really 30 min per day is not that hard either if one is prepared for it. Slowman knows that I was unable to both walk and run for a bunch of years from a couple of bad crashes, so if anyone should be asking for this to be made easier it should be me. But I got to the full 100 the last two years. Two years ago, it was a massive feeling of accomplishment. Last year I got to over 100 because I wanted to do over 1000km (I wanted to run average of 10km per day)....three years before that I was at zero per day and watched from the sidelines.

There have been years that I am shut out of trying to get to platinum because my body can't do it....other years, it has been easy because I was ready. But its not for everyone, but in a way, it is achievable by many many many with sufficient advanced prep.

Right now I am jogging 3.5 -5 hrs per week every week come hell or high water so that I am ready when 100/100 starts. I could go to zero easily given the time management challenges right now, but carving out 30+ minutes daily of easy jogging is like "spring training for the regular season". If I was at 0-1 hrs per week, the challenge just may break me when "regular season" starts.

My main point to slowman is consider the track record of how many people have done this and this beiing the most accessible and highest participation event on ST and that we may only hear in print from those who have never put in the real effort to get ready before and modulate their effort inside the challenge to get it done.

If someone shows up unprepared, they will certainly suffer during 100/100 (as they would in an ironman)

The point of the challenge is to be accessible, not to be a dick measuring contest.

When the best coaches on the forum say that the minimum run should be shorter, I tend to listen.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

i just looked at the results of last year and many ran more then 100...some in the 250. Will the 3 run max a day reduce that number?(projection) . Were people logging 5-6 run a day last year?

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Jonathan Caron / Professional Coach / ironman champions / age group world champions
Jonnyo Coaching
Instargram

No one is being forced to enter the 100/100 Challenge.

For people like me, it's a bit of an incentive to get in 60-70 runs when I might otherwise do 40-50 runs. Sort of fun to see where I end up.

For people who don't want/need to do a 3-mile/30-minute run every day, much less for 100 days straight, that's fine. They can enter and track what they have done, or they can choose to take a pass on the Challenge.

For those who are looking for an ambitious goal, going for 100 runs in the 100/100 Challenge seems like a challenging, but still doable, goal.

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"Human existence is based upon two pillars: Compassion and knowledge. Compassion without knowledge is ineffective; Knowledge without compassion is inhuman." Victor Weisskopf.

Right. I think the premise of 100/100 is perfect.

The point is that 30 minute runs are probably excessive, and counter to the spirit of what its mission is -- to build run durability to then take into triathlon season. That's why I'd be for moving the minimum run to 20 minutes.

I think Dev gets it wrong -- people shouldn't be looking to train to participate in the 100/100, unless they're looking to sit atop the leaderboard at the end of it. People should be looking at the 100/100 as a motivational tactic to get them through the winter, much like you are describing.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

Yes, if you're looking at 100/100 as some sort of Ultra Challenge - like a Backyard or Slow Marathon (were you run only one mile at a time but you do it every hour for 26 hours( - then that's not how it was originally proposed; which WAS to build a consistent training routine and base throughout the Winter

YMMV

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Exactly. I think we’ve let the competition side of the Challenge outweigh the point—which is to build up run fitness over the winter and get into the spring with a great base.

Shorten the minimum run length. It just encourages proper recovery run days, probably will still have plenty of medium to long runs, and now we get more people to 100 without as many people dropping off either overtrained or injured. We all win.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

Well I originally designed the thing as a challenge meaning it was an event in its own right.

Conceptually we can use B events to train for other A events and for example you may hit an Olympic tri PB or half Ironman PB on the way to an Ironman A event, but that does not diminish that the B events that are kind of training days aren't events in their own right.

I know many who treated 100/100 on its own as a primary stage training objective and not much different than entering a paid for event.

There is 50/100, 60/100, 70/100, 80/100, 90/100 and 100/100. We can all personalize how we want to use it.

But if someone wants to do 100x30min in 100 days they should be in decent running shape since.minimally they need to run 3.5 hrs per week. That's not a massive volume but it's not light either, at least it's heavy enough that you can't roll out of bed and run that much for 14 weeks in a row .

The original inspiration for this came running 10km average daily when my friend Ray Zahab was running a marathon per day across the Sahara. I went for 10km per day average but took 30 min as easy days but took no days off

I pulled that off again last year getting to 1002 km but with days off and lots of doubles. A few years before that I could barely walk...and with no events in Canada during Covid19 100/100 and some virtual XC races made for a packed winter !!!!

The nice thing about 100/100 is that there is a lot of flex in the rules. I believe you can run 15 min per day and you would get credit for 50/100.

I will probably target running 800km thru the winter which at my pace is roughly 45 min per day. Some days running over an hour in one or two runs, other days 30 min other days zero when I ski or swim bug volume. I don't know how many runs gets me there.

Interestingly after 2019-2020 100/100 ended where I hit 800km , I had two weeks of light running and Covid19 hit at which point I ended up running 1000km in the first 80 days of pandemic as pools were closed and weather sucked for riding. I was definitely ready for some solid running after a good winter so 100/100 set me up well as you are suggesting!!!

In any case what rules end up on here won't change my personal path.

I should ask you have you ever hit 100 on the 30 minute minimum. I'd not consider giving it a shot.

Ironman is a stupid distance and 4/120/30km ITU distance is a distance more people can race but just because more people can race the easier distance does not mean Ironman should reduce its difficulty.

There are plenty of less ambitious levels than 100/100 of 30 minutes. If you do 20 min hundred times nothing stops you listening to your coach you just won't get credit for the 100/100 designation

Just to be clear training to get to start of 100/100 with low risk of injury means running 2-2.5 hrs per week before 100/100 so you can gradually build to 3 hrs per week early in challenge then 4-5 hrs per.week at back end of challenge. It's not much really.

The main reason some people get injured is starting too much too quickly. Exact same reason why many blow up in racing. They just start too fast when fresh and go to deep and cannot recoup for the next miles.

Most who don't get hurt in the challenge log lots of miles, and also have great formal races during the challenge or after the challenge are those who respect their own capacity and don't get sucked into the pace of others.

It's not a "my coach" thing, Dev.

It's the overwhelming feedback I get when I talk to coaches about the challenge, and that it is the limiter in getting their athletes to participate in the challenge. Because, well, why even bother signing up when the rules will explicitly tell you at least 20% of the runs your coach is giving you as workouts won't count?

That's the problem I'm trying to solve for to grow this thing. I want to be over 1,000 signups, and I want to have at least 20% of those signups be newbies, and I want a higher success rate. So I went to the people most likely to influence sign-ups to get their feedback.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

Ok I guess where we defer is I never expected that this challenge would be for newbies and I did not set it up to be a good training plan. It was supposed to be for people who already have a good running background who want a somewhat difficult bar to cross and achieve something tough. I just worked out that there were several 100 per year who fell into that category and if it caps out at 400, 500, 600 who seriously give it go, I think that is better than watering it down to make it a training plan that 1000+ can access.

You get more people in most large marathons than an ironman, but that is Ok since the latter event in many ways is tougher. Slowman can ask himself what he wants from this as I handed it to him a few years ago to run. i say that 1000's over the years have voted with their feet. There may have been many on the sidelines who did not partake, but the number of those who did not is not quantified. The number who did 30 min per day is known.

I do 100's of runs per year in the 15 min range, but I am not asking for my 15 min habit to count in the challenge. I just have to do another 15 min run for the two to count as a 30. Pretty well all of this month, every one of my swims had a 10 min run before and 15 min run after (mainly a time management thing so I don't have to make time for a run workout). I barely do one "real run" during weekdays and then I run on weekends. But all these tiny runs would not count on their own the challenge (I would need to add them up per the rules).

That's the thing. May not have been your intent, but that's what it's become. It's why we push it. It's why we do a bunch of group runs on Zwift. We want as many heads in the door as we can get -- which brings more people to the table.

Maybe it's something as simple as making the rules as "most runs must be at least 30 minutes in length, but 2x per week, you can go as short as 20 minutes" and you don't need the "make up" rule for those runs. Or allow people to do the "make up" part of the run on the day before (as it's usually going to be the day after a long run that people might want a 15-20 minute recovery day).

Look, 100 runs in 100 days is always going to be a challenge. But I think there's some wiggle room to please both the competitive set and those aiming to just complete this and get into spring healthy.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

I see where you are coming from and that's why we put in the split run a few years ago. So you can do 15+15 counting at 1 or 15+45 counting as two. I think what you are wanting is already there.

But 3000 minutes of running over 100 days is harder than 2000 minutes and that's where the real difference lies. Its how much more effort is needed on aggregate to get to the finish. Its not for everyone if you want the full designation and that's OK....there are all the other levels there.

But you never answered my question if you have done all 100 on the 30 minute minimum. If you had graduated through that and want to change it, you would have more weight. Right now you are coming across like the guy who wants to get the marathon finisher medal by moving the goal post to 18 miles. I have not run an open marathon since 2005 because I don't want to deal with the pain of that event. Its way too tough for my liking. More power to the guys who race them

best way to know the answer is to just poll it, i think, and that poll has just been placed on the site.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Haha...you know a popularity contest will lean towards making something easier. it's why Ironman Arizona would sell out and Tahoe would not....but on the flip side you also get all those people who go do Wildflower because it is tough but they just put their head down and went and did it and drew internal satisfaction hammering Nasty Grade on jello legs and thrashing themselves down the final hill to the finish in 100F heat.

It's up to you if you want it to veer towards Ironman Arizona or Wlidflower/IM Tahoe.

On that note gotta head out for a 1 hrs run and 2 hrs swim