2012 in 2012 Challenge

Blurred but beautiful at the Resolution 5K

And how resolute we are! A growing list of Shore Things (you can see it here; let me know if your name should be added) has committed to Wow Powerwalking's 2012 in 2012 Challenge. The details for those still mulling it over:

• What it is: Wow's challenge to walk 2012 kilometres by Dec. 21, 2012 (Winter Solstice)
• What counts: Training walks, fitness walks, race mileage (but everyday "steps" do not count)
• How it works: Email Lee  – scott[at]wowpowerwalking[dot]com – to state your commitment; track your distances; submit your totals to Wow monthly by email
• Perks: Besides the health benefits... 
• For every month you maintain the minimum of 167.67K, your name enters a draw for a monthly New Balance gift
• Each person, when passing 800K and 1600K receives a gift card from NB for a discount on shoes
• Each person who walks 2,012 in 2,012 will be entered in a draw to win a WOW membership for Jan-April 2013 (giving you unlimited Wow classes for the time period)
• For every 100K walked over and above 2,012K, you get another ticket in this draw
• And did I mention the health benefits?

Now the average every-daily distance to achieve the 2012 Challenge is roughly 5.5K or about 39K per week. (As the time period is 10 days less than a year, it's actually slightly more than that.)

However, you can use different weekly patterns to make the challenge fit your life. Here are a few patterns – you could follow a different one every week, depending on what's going on with your schedule:

Seven days a week:
5.5K X 7
(6K X 6) + 3K
((3K X 2) X 6) + 3K (up to 6 days of two short walks, plus a 3K walk on one day)
On any day, you could break one long distance into two or three shorter pieces.

Six days a week:
(5.75K X 5) + 10K on a weekend
(6K X 4) + 7K + 8K
(8K X 3) + (5K X 3)

Five days a week:
(7.2K X 4) + 10K
8K X 5
4K X 10 (again, breaking any or all of the 8K above into two short walks)

These are simply suggestions to show that it can be done. The real challenge will be in those months, when weather might limit our longer walks or holidays might interrupt your routine. Race training makes our job simpler. Let's aim to keep to the minimum during lousy weather and then bank hours whenever we can.

I will be creating a one-year training schedule that incorporates training for the races that I am doing (and I know others are too). It's difficult to do one such schedule that takes everyone's training plans into account. However, if you email me, I'll send you a copy that you can modify for your own races. My spreadsheet plugs in standard training walks from our half marathon schedules, and gives you weekly totals. We'll need to be sure we have peaks and valleys for best training effect – we can't simply go with the 39K per week, every week, all year long.

Jan has kindly prepared an Excel file to track your monthly distances. If you email me, I'll forward you a copy of that, too.

Team training might be the way to go with this. We'll probably have to add one extra group walk a week. However, the same time might not work for everyone. Tell us which day/time would work for you, and perhaps patterns will emerge.

Good luck to us all.  I'll add a link to this post under our Interests List to make it easy to find. Keep the discussion going.