Due to COVID-19, and related social distancing requirements, we can\u2019t hold our \u201cnormal\u201d summer Fun Runs, in a group setting. But, in our recent online survey, you, our members, told us you are keen to keep: 1) running, 2) participating with a group, and 3) sharing running experiences with each other, however that might look in the current environment. So, we are planning to adapt to the situation and try the following plan. <\/em><\/p>\n In keeping with our tradition, and members\u2019 feedback, we will do weekly Fun Runs again this summer! But, instead of in-person, group runs, we will (at least, while we are under social distancing restrictions) do them \u201cvirtually\u201d. What this means, is that you will run on your own, on one of the \u201cstandard\u201d courses the club lists or on a course of your own choosing, and then report your run to the club so your participation can be recorded and tracked over the season.<\/p>\n On our website, we will list each weekly Fun Run – we plan to start these the week of May 18-24, 2020. Like we\u2019ve done in the past, each week, we will designate a particular club Vice-President (\u201cVP\u201d) to be in charge of that week\u2019s run; he or she will be responsible for monitoring who participates, integrating the results into the season participation tracking spreadsheet, and possibly establishing and judging a special \u201cChallenge\u201d for that week\u2019s run. Unlike<\/em> what we\u2019ve done in the past, each week\u2019s event listing will NOT specify where the run is being held, nor the specific date and time of the run (more on this later)!<\/p>\n The runs can be one of our Short, Medium, or Long courses \u2013 or of any length you want (but at least 0.75 miles \u2013 that\u2019s really the minimum we\u2019ll allow, in order for the run to count for participation purposes!). You can time yourself, and report your time, as well \u2013 but that\u2019s not necessary, as the important point is really not how fast you run, but that<\/em> you run!<\/p>\n As part of doing these runs \u201cvirtually\u201d, though, it will also be important to adhere to good social distancing protocols \u2013 we in no way want to run afoul of the efforts being made by our elected officials to ensure our safety during this pandemic! Thus, it will be important to doing the following on your runs:<\/p>\n In order to comply with the spirit of these rules, we are making the following adjustments to our normal Fun Runs protocol:<\/p>\n While we will not designate a particular course to be run each week, we intend to make certain \u201cstandard\u201d Wind Drinker Fun Run courses available as options; each will include our normal Short, Medium, and Long routes, with course maps we’ll post on this website<\/a>.\u00a0 These will be (for the most part) the locations where we would have held the weekly runs, if we\u2019d had a normal summer season. Our hope is that you will pick a different one of these courses each week, and try to hit as many as possible over the course of the summer \u2013 for example, you might run a Triple Tree course in June, and a Regional Park course in August, while someone else does the Regional Park run in July, and Triple Tree in September. And you\u2019ll always have the option to run a route of your own choosing, for any given week \u2013 maybe you\u2019ll even want to share a favorite route of yours with others in the club?<\/p>\n In the recent survey, many of you indicated you like to see how you and your friends are doing at participating over the summer, and get rewarded for meeting a certain threshold of participation for the season. Since we won\u2019t be meeting in person, we won\u2019t have our normal race results from chip timing, which we\u2019ve used in past seasons to track participation. Instead, we\u2019ll be relying on you to tell us when you\u2019ve completed the weekly runs!<\/p>\n We are setting up a special page<\/a> on our website, where you can record your run each week \u2013 letting us know when you ran, where, how far, what interesting cloud formations you saw, etc.\u00a0 If you\u2019re participating in our Strava Club (see more on this, later), all your runs in a week will be recorded there, but we\u2019ll want you to use our special website page to identify the single run from that week that you want us to use as that week\u2019s Fun Run, for participation purposes.\u00a0 And if you forget to submit a run you did, during the week you ran it, you can submit it at a later time \u2013 but if you submit 20 weeks of runs during the last week of the season, the Fun Run Committee will deem this a bit suspicious!<\/p>\n Our intrepid VP\u2019s will be in charge of managing and collating your run inputs over the summer season, and updating a summary table tracking how our members are doing, as far as progressing towards Participation Awards. This tracking table will be viewable via our website, too \u2013 so you can see where you stand each week.<\/p>\n We (your Wind Drinkers Board) think it\u2019s important to encourage our members to get out and run, so we offer awards to our members who get out and get it done! In our survey, we asked you what types of awards would be valuable to you, and you surprised us (well, at least, me \u2013 I\u2019m not sure about the rest of the Board)! You said, \u201cjust give us some more of that normal running swag that we usually get\u201d \u2013 so \u2026 you have spoken, and so it shall be! This summer we\u2019ll be pushing our latest BSWD-branded swag item, collapsible silicone water bottles \u2013 perfect for carrying your own water to those trailheads that no longer have working faucets or water fountains! We have other, similar, cool swag from past promotions, so if you\u2019d prefer a nice thermos bottle or buff, we can hook you up!<\/p>\n As we were investigating ways to track our members\u2019 running this summer, we played around with Strava as a potential tool.\u00a0 Strava<\/a> is an online platform for recording your runs, and can be very useful for tracking and analyzing your training over time (\u201cAm I over-\/under-training? Am I running too hard, or not hard enough? Am I increasing my weekly mileage too quickly, so that I\u2019m risking injury?\u201d). Many of you have probably heard of Strava, or similar tracking systems like Garmin Connect, Map My Run, TrainingPeaks \u2013 or maybe you\u2019ve been using one or more of these systems for years. But what sets Strava apart, in my mind, is that it has additional social networking capabilities that can help us feel like we\u2019re all in this together \u2013 it\u2019s kinda like having a combination of a run-tracking tool and Facebook!<\/p>\n When you have a Strava account, you can join Strava \u201cClubs\u201d \u2013 these are groups that you can participate in, where you can share your runs and see what runs other Club members have done, share feedback and encouragement (give your friend a \u201cKudo\u201d for completing a hard workout or hitting a PR), set up Events for the Club, post info that might be of interest to other members (\u201cSouth Cottonwood trail still has knee-deep drifts beyond the second bridge\u201d). You can also add photos to your running entries. We have established a Strava Club, exclusively for the Wind Drinkers<\/a>, where you can share your runs with others \u2013 all of your runs, or just the ones you want other club members to see (you can keep your activities \u201cPrivate\u201d or make them \u201cPublic\u201d).<\/p>\n Some of our weekly Fun Runs may, at the discretion of the responsible VP for that week, include some type of fun \u201cChallenge\u201d, such as \u201crun in your oldest race T-shirt\u201d, \u201cwear your best Hawaiian shirt\u201d, \u201crun the most scenic trail you know of\u201d or \u201ccreate a picture, using the trace of your running route\u201d (yes, this is a thing, now).\u00a0 To participate in most of these Challenges, you\u2019ll need to include a photo with your run \u2013 that\u2019s where Strava\u2019s capability to upload a picture with your run is useful.\u00a0 We\u2019ll highlight our Challenge winners, with their photos, in our club newsletter.\u00a0 I think we\u2019ll have fun seeing what interesting and engaging social activities we can create for the club, using this tool!<\/p>\n And don\u2019t think that you need to own a fancy GPS watch to use Strava!\u00a0 If you carry your phone when you run, you can also use the Strava app to measure and upload your runs very easily (hit \u201cStart\u201d; hit \u201cStop\u201d. Done!).\u00a0 Or, you can enter your time and distance manually \u2013 no \u2018device\u2019 needed at all!\u00a0 For those who want to learn it, we\u2019ll do an online tutorial demo sometime early in the season, and put a recording of it onto the website for later reference.<\/p>\n Well, that\u2019s the plan! Sound good? We\u2019ll keep hoping that at some point in the summer, we\u2019ll get past the need to restrict our group activities \u2013 if that happens, we\u2019ll do a quick pivot, and resume doing our normal in-person runs on Wednesday nights at 6:30! But if it doesn\u2019t happen, we\u2019ll have fun anyway!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Summer 2020 \u201cVirtual Fun Runs\u201d Plan Due to COVID-19, and related social distancing requirements, we can\u2019t hold our \u201cnormal\u201d summer Fun Runs, in a group setting. But, in our recent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":24,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-22518","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/winddrinkers.org\/trailhead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/22518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/winddrinkers.org\/trailhead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/winddrinkers.org\/trailhead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winddrinkers.org\/trailhead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winddrinkers.org\/trailhead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22518"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/winddrinkers.org\/trailhead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/22518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22546,"href":"https:\/\/winddrinkers.org\/trailhead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/22518\/revisions\/22546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/winddrinkers.org\/trailhead\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Weekly Virtual Fun Runs \u2013 the same, but different!<\/h2>\n
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Tracking Your Runs, and Season Participation Awards<\/h2>\n
Something New \u2013 the Strava online tracking platform!<\/h2>\n
What else?<\/h2>\n