Health & Fitness,  Ramblings

We Crave a Different Kind of Buzz

I have no intention of ever running a marathon for several reasons. The number of people who would be there are however many reasons I have, plus I don’t want to run a marathon.

However, I have been enjoying completing “races” virtually. I know some people don’t consider them worthwhile, especially since you can do a lot of them at any pace you’d like, over any amount of time you’d like, and you can include daily activities, like washing dishes, folding laundry, and stirring coffee in your progress, but here’s a secret…

You don’t have to care what other people think about the things you enjoy. Liberate yourself from the Addiction to Approval, as they say. I don’t know who might actually be saying that, but I bet someone is.

My first virtual race was going to be some pumpkin run that was bombarding my Facebook feed for weeks, but the idea of paying for a medal, jacket, and bib number seemed silly to me. But why? If I want to do it, why is it silly? I don’t think putting money into a golf hobby, model car building hobby, or video game hobby is silly, if that’s what you enjoy. So why would contributing money toward an enjoyable goal via a virtual race be silly?

I missed the pumpkin race and the turkey race, both of which I intend to complete later this year, but I did come across Yes.Fit in the process of looking into other virtual races. Just so you know, this isn’t sponsored, and none of these are affiliate links.

I’ve already completed the Yellowstone National Park race, which is 128.2 miles, and I’m halfway through my second race of Glacier National Park, which is only 49 miles. I chose those because I live here, but my next race will be Manatees, a 68 mile race, which Yes.Fit donates some of the proceeds from to Save the Manatees Club. There are a few races for which they donate proceeds, such as Elephants in Thailand, Sea Turtle Exploration, and We Go Together Like Bees & Honey, so you can have your motivation benefit your health and something else as well.

I don’t include daily activities in my progress. I’ve allowed cycling, running, and walking to be included, but they are distinct activities and not just when I’m walking around. You can sync a number of fitness devices to their programs, which can automatically upload data. The Garmin allows for activating specific activities, so I trigger that before beginning any runs/walks/cycling, then it uploads the workout to Yes.Fit, and they subtract those miles from the total miles left to complete an active race. I do have to manually edit my workouts because the Garmin is often off half to three-quarters of a mile, probably because I’ve never personalized my stride length, but it’s easy to do.

You are free to do the races at your pace and in your time, but you’re also able to set a goal and Yes.Fit shows you, via a graph, if you’re on schedule or not and what amount of miles you should clock that day to get back on track. It’s a great way to stay motivated and you can collect pretty medals (or t-shirts, or both) at the same time.

Number of times I used the word race in this post: 13, 14 if you count just then.

Title From:
Royals
by Lorde