Walk/Run Challenge

After organizing the 1,000-mile walk/run challenge group in September 2020, I did the math to determine how many miles per day I needed to walk/run to meet my goal. In the end, the total would be that I would need to do about three miles per day if I took no days off. That seemed like a lot, but I knew it was doable with little effort. My unanswered question was if my plan would have me overtraining my body. Experience told me that I should listen to my body and make adjustments if I have any abnormal pains or discomfort, but how could I avoid overtraining in the first place? From playing sports in high school and my time in the military, I knew that stretching before and after physical exercise would help prevent some injuries, but what else did I need to know? The Mayo Clinic published an article titled “Walking: Trim your waistline, improve your health” that outlined the many benefits of walking, including that you could maintain a healthy weight and lose body fat, prevent or manage...

  Walking or running a thousand miles in a year sounds intimidating. Breaking your larger goal into smaller goals makes it easier to wrap your mind around achieving it. When asked how to eat an elephant, the adage says you should eat it one bite at a time. These smaller goals help prevent mental barriers to the larger goal, and mental barriers can prevent you from even getting started. This overall distance in a year as a larger goal can be broken down into quarterly, semi-annual, monthly, bi-monthly, weekly, and daily periods. If you wanted to flex your arithmetic skills, you could go down to nanoseconds. We would not recommend goal setting for walks and runs for periods less than a week because it may be too granular and reduce your flexibility in your schedule. A slight slip-up can make it seem challenging to get back on track. To determine how many miles you would have to walk or run, divide 1,000 miles by the number of periods in a year. It would take you to walk 84 miles per ...