Our annual winter run challenge is starting a little earlier this year, by popular demand. The Slowtwitch 100/100 Run will begin 4 weeks from yesterday, on a Sunday, November 15th. It’ll also end on a Sunday, if we’ve counted out 100 days accurately.

Nobody took very seriously this whimsical idea, started by longtime forum member Devashish Paul, but this is will be the 14th edition. The last 2 years have had the most participants in the Challenge's history, and those officially part of the Challenge last year logged about 31,000 runs and covered almost 150,000 miles.

This name is a misnomer. You haven’t failed if you don’t reach 100 days having run 100 sessions. The point of the challenge is to champion constancy. To learn how to achieve it through honoring tomorrow’s run today.

This is my 50th year of competitive running, and you might think that the older you get, the harder this challenge gets, but, for me, its been the opposite. At first, I never considered this challenge achievable by someone like me, who runs at best perhaps 3 days a week. However, 2 years ago I gave it a whirl, and topped out at about 60 runs. Last year I hit 80 runs. This year I aspire to beat that record, while ending up a sturdier, healthier runner at the end than at the start.

How do you enter the 100/100 Challenge? You go to our Training Log, select Challenges, and you’ll go to ongoing and ready-to-start challenges. Click “Enter” and you’re entered. That’s it.

Of course, you must be a Slowtwitch Reader Forum member and you must be logged in. We have one common login throughout Slowtwitch, and if you go to our Reader Forum you’ll see a prompt to “Log In” and if you go there you’ll be guided to create an account. This is what you need to take part in this challenge. There is no cost for any of this, except the cost of being part of a community, with the accountability that comes with it. The accountability is the glue that makes the challenge work. Once you enter, you’ll see yourself on the leaderboard.

On our Reader Forum is a “thread” that will have several hundred more posts, when we’re done, on this challenge. Here is that thread.

If you want to look at how seriously our community takes this, here is last year's leaderboard. Yup, one guy actually ran 550 times in 100 days, and he didn't just to the minimum. He ran about 120 miles a week. If you toggle through the fields you can see who ran the most sessions, the most miles, and the fastest average pace.

Some of the coaches who frequent the Slowtwitch Reader Forum have volunteered to help you through the challenge Brian Stover has created the Stover Training Plan for the 100/100, over on TrainingPeaks. His plan starts now. Right now. If you're looking instead for a plan that solely focuses on the challenge days, Jen Ingram has created a plan for you as well.

We’re going to have some fun. We’ve never done giveaways and the like, but we’re going to do that this year. We’re also going to spend a lot of energy trying to make this work for you regardless of platform – indoor or out – and to that end we’ll purpose a lot of our weekly Zwift runs toward the 100/100.

You’ll hear a lot more from us on the upcoming 100/100, but this is just to let you know that you have almost a month to get ready.