Operation Inspiration's Solo Seven Challenge

Welcome to Operation Inspiration’s Solo Seven Challenge in which we challenge you (and ourselves) to work out every day during the week of March 23 to 29. The goal of the Solo Seven Challenge is to get in a workout of any length, be it 10 minutes or 10 hours, by yourself each day this week. (If you missed our introduction to what Operation Inspiration is, head over to our rollout article to check it out.)

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re living in dynamic, turbulent times. For many of us, that’s thrown a wrench into our habit of near-daily exercise, whether in the form of direct barriers, loss of motivation, or another reason. Enter the Solo Seven Challenge, your little pat on the back or kick in the butt (whichever you need) to find new ways to work out every day next week and to find joy in solo exercise.

We have a couple goals in mind with the challenge. First, we want to help you re-establish routine in your new lifestyle. A week of workouts is a solid start to developing positive habits in our new realities. Second, we want to encourage you to embrace solo exercising, as that’s what many of us will need to do during this time. On this latter point, maybe frame this constraint as an opportunity for creativity and personal growth, much like how the very limited constraints of the haiku yield creative beauty. (Hey, why not leave a positive haiku about your new running routine in the comments!) Finally, we want this to be a community event. Even when we’re working out alone, there is strength in knowing that other members of our global running community are, too!

To join iRunFar’s Solo Seven challenge this coming week, one option is to join the iRunFar club on Strava. You can also just commit to it and do it on your own. While you’re at it, continue sharing your week’s journey in the comments section of this article or in iRunFar’s Strava club. Below, we’ll share some additional details on how to participate in the challenge and share your adventures from it.

How to Participate in Operation Inspiration’s Solo Seven Challenge

While there’s no absolute need to join our Strava club to take part in this challenge, we’ll be focusing our challenge efforts there. If you want to join us on Strava, here’s how to do so!

Create a Strava account, if you don’t have one, and join iRunFar’s Strava club, if you’re not a member already.
Log one solo workout of any length every day, from Monday, March 23 through Sunday, March 29. Depending on your local government’s regulations on outdoor activity, this might mean yoga in your living room, weights in the kitchen, or a jog on a bike path while maintaining six feet of social distance.
We encourage you to take time to browse other challengers’ workouts in the iRunFar Strava club to give them kudos and comments, as well as to join in discussion in the posts we’ll make within the club over the coming week.
This is an honors-system challenge. If you don’t use a device to track your workout, manual entries are permitted.

We also encourage you to share one of your more inspirational workouts from the week with us, so that we might share it with the larger community in Operation Inspiration’s Airdrops. Jump further down the article for details.

For the time being, leave a comment below if you’re joining us for the challenge!

This challenge is free! Operation Inspiration is a fundraising campaign for the World Health Organizations’s COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund.

How to Donate to Operation Inspiration’s Fundraising Campaign

[Update: We’ve finished collecting donations.] We have another communal goal for Operation Inspiration, and it’s important. We believe in the collective energy and power we runners have in aiding the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and that’s why we’re proudly fundraising for the World Health Organization’s (WHO) COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund as it supplies the financial resources WHO needs to help countries prevent, detect, and manage COVID-19.

By making a donation to the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund via Operation Inspiration, 100% of your donation will go to the Fund, as iRunFar is covering the processing fees.

Operation Inspiration’s Health and Safety Guidelines

As hard as it is to say out loud, we’re amidst a global health crisis. Our participation in Operation Inspiration must use the utmost care for the safety of ourselves, our community members, and our local government regulations.

In this light, we:

Ask you to follow all your local government requirements and guidelines;
Ask you to follow the social distancing and health suggestions in our article, COVID-19: A Trail Running and Ultrarunning Community Guide;
Discourage you from running with anyone outside your household;
Discourage you from traveling more than a very short distance to go for a run;
Discourage you from remote or risky runs that might divert healthcare professionals to your search or care;
Encourage you to be creative in finding inspiring runs that have been hiding in plain sight or finding ways to make your indoor workouts more enjoyable.

How to Submit to Operation Inspiration’s Airdrops

We’re planning at least two articles, called Operation Inspiration’s Airdrops, sharing inspiration from within the iRunFar community. Here’s how you can make submissions for possible inclusion in those articles:

From now through April 5, submit photos, videos, and stories from your inspiring runs or other workouts to operationinspiration at irunfar dot com. We’ll choose from among the submissions in our Airdrop articles.
Please limit submissions to 2 paragraphs of text, 3 photos (horizontal layout preferred), and/or 1 video up to 30 seconds in length (again, horizontal layout, please).
If your submissions are too large for email attachments, upload them to your public cloud of choice and send a cloud link as part of your email message to operationinspiration at irunfar dot com.
Include your name and where you live, and limit submissions to 1 per person.

By submitting, you give us permission to use your name, location, and all or part of your submission in Operation Inspiration’s Airdrop articles, related video, and sharing these works on social media. We will never use your contact information or submissions for any other purpose.

Final Thoughts

We hope you’ll consider joining us, the global iRunFar community, over the next week. Your action will benefit not only yourself, but the others around the world who you inspire!

Wherever and however you can, get after it!

– Bryon, Meghan, and the iRunFar Team