Virtual 465 Challenge

Do you love to run virtual races? I certainly do! When I learned that this 53-mile virtual challenge would encircle Indianapolis, Indiana, it was even more cool to me because my brother and his family live there. It’s a wonderful thriving city. I love to run there. But let’s face it travel is challenging at times (especially with coronavirus and flu circulating now) and running around Interstate 465 itself isn’t really possible or safe, so the virtual option was very appealing.

What does this challenge offer? The opportunity to cover 53 miles any way you please in activity between January and February. 2 months to cover a full 53 mile loop (or more). You can run, walk, bike, swim, dance, hop, skip, the possibilities are endless. We had the added advantage in leap year of the extra leap day, the last day of February.

It’s an easy mile a day basically (rounding off) allowing you some rest days if you choose to use or need those.

Recovering from a recent ankle injury late last year, I liked the idea of using this challenge to both motivate me to regain activity and gently ease into a tougher training cycle for races.

It was a lot of fun to see friends participate in the challenge and see how many loops people were covering. Even kids! It’s fun for the whole family.

I chose to do the paper logs to track mileage day by day and for the sake of simplicity logged my activity as run/walk. Every 53 miles or so, I tried to mark which loop that would be. Just take your total mileage and divide by 53. I thought I might maybe do 2 loops. I wasn’t sure how solid winter running would be with the cold and snow/ice. However, indoor miles count too. So a lot of treadmill activity was included for my quest.

It was good to have others going through the challenge with you and see where on the Interstate 465 loop you would be day by day if you were covering the minimal distance every day in order to finish one loop.

‘Twas so exciting to see people stretching their activity to crush just one more loop. Wow! I was very inspired by that. It was very fun to see youth, adults, and older folks getting involved with the challenge too. Tell your family tell your friends. This is a challenge to make amends (of your lack of physical activity if that is an issue;)

Fantastic idea to start the challenge on January 1 as we try to finish and crush our yearly resolutions. Perfect timing really.

Finally, at the end of the challenge, finishers receive an awesome finisher shirt with 465 challenge finisher and the I-465 logo on it as well as a superb unique medal with a race car which drives all the way around the loop just to remind you how fun it was.

Fortunately, I was able to finish a little more than six loops. More than I expected. I found that the challenger/looper energetic excitement phenomenon was synergestically propelling me a little at the end, especially in February and that was helpful. I loved the ENERGY and the SYNERGY! We wrapped it at 337.63 miles or 6.4 loops (53 miles each).