21 Days Challenge
On May the 5th, I ran the Copenhagen Marathon in 3 hours and change. A week later, I did a solo Ironman 70.3. A week after that, on the 21st of May, I decided to embark on a challenge to run 21.1km everyday for 21 days.
Why would anybody subject themselves to such torture you might ask?
My answer is: I don't consider it torture, and I like taking on challenges.
21 Days to form a habit
Perhaps you have heard of the claim, that we can form a habit if we do it every day for 21 days. In reality, this was more about how long it took for a patient of plastic surgery to get used to how their new face looks. Regardless, I thought it would be interesting to see how close to automatic and effortless running a Half Marathon would become, if I ran one every single day for 21 days.
Calling upon HiveRun
Although I am happy to set and complete challenges for myself, I thought it would be a great opportunity to call upon the existing running community we have on Hive to join me and keep them accountable by posting their progress and results each day.
My challenge was as follows:
Pick a distance, minimum 5k, all the way to 21k that you must complete every day for the 21 days, and if you are able to complete all 21 days, then I will give a prize of 21 x min_distance in HIVE. Results must be posted each day. For example, if you run 5k for 21 days, then you win 105 Hive. Much wow, so easy, lets go!
Shameless Liketu Moments plug
With Liketu moments, you can post even micro-er blogs/updates and have them as a comment instead of a main post. We index and show the posts by day so that you can make it a 'moment' of your day to look back to.
As you can see, this format was perfect for my challenge, and all the participants were asked to post their results on Liketu moments as well.
Finally, participants including myself were asked to track their runs using Strava, and post their strava results accordingly. Perhaps we can look at integrating strava2hive in the future for seamless activity posts on Liketu. Something to think about for the future.
Some Stats
Total distance for all runners: 1823.13 km
Total time for all runners: 8 days, 7 hours, 6 minutes, and 56 seconds
Average distance run across all runners: 6.68 km
Average pace across all runners: 6 minutes and 51 seconds per km
Average total time spent running across all runners: 15 hours, 18 minutes, and 59 seconds
We started off with 19 runners, and we finished with 13.
| Runner | Total Distance (km) | Min Distance (km) | Prize (Min Dist. x 21) (HIVE) |
|---|---|---|---|
| @artsyjose | 117.37 | 5 | 105 |
| @cjlugo | 105.95 | 5.01 | 105.21 |
| @danielvehe | 131.99 | 6.01 | 126.21 |
| @elmerlin | 443.36 | 21.1 | 443.1 |
| @enmy | 107.47 | 5 | 105 |
| @enovf | 116.35 | 5 | 105 |
| @erilej | 132.11 | 5.04 | 105.84 |
| @graciliano | 117.66 | 5 | 105 |
| @leomontagg | 106.14 | 5 | 105 |
| @mfigueroa | 108 | 5 | 105 |
| @siriromo | 106.42 | 5 | 105 |
| @soychalbed | 115.07 | 5.01 | 105.21 |
| @victoraraguayan1 | 115.24 | 5.03 | 105.63 |
As for my own "Prize", I managed to clock up an eligible 443.1 HIVE Kilometers which I have donated to @neilamarcano who sadly had to deal with bereavement mid challenge and dropped out.
This was my training log from Strava.
These were the shoes I used for the challenge. A different shoe each day. I'm a shoe connoisseur, but when you run nearly 600km a month, you kind of have to be!
Which one is your favourite?
Final thoughts
Firstly, I want to thank all of the participants for joining me on this challenge. I probably would have backed out if not for the accountability posting each day and interacting with all the other brave participants. Even if you didn't make it to the end, I applaud you for giving it a try and I hope you will try the next challenge and succeed!
Secondly, I think running is taking off in a big way. Perhaps it was one of the few sports people could do during lockdown, or maybe we're all inspired by people like Eliud Kipchoge and his 'No human is limited' mantra. In any case, I think we have an opportunity grow the running community here, and I certainly hope that my next challenge will be taken on by a whole lot more people. I'm looking to have some partners to try grow this initiative in a big way. I am ready to do crazy challenges and make some noise. Perhaps you would like to support in some way? Reach out and let me know.
Lastly, life is too short to constantly worry about putting in the grind to just make a little bit more money. I remember having a conversation with Dan at Hive fest about what ultimately leads people to not want to live, and that was that their bodies start failing them, and it isn't enjoyable anymore because doing basic things become difficult, even painful. If we can keep our bodies in good shape as long as we can, then we can live our best lives for much longer.