Congratulations to our challenge winners for the month of July!

• Most Miles: Once again, lasabur takes top honors with 250.08 miles. Go lasabur!
• Fastest 1 Mile: mdoug earns fastest mile honors with a time of 4′47”
• Fastest 3K: mdoug again, with a time of 9′42”
• Fastest 5K: mdoug takes the prize with a time of 16′30”
• Fastest 10K: mdoug sweeps the July “Fastest” challenges with a time of 35′23”

Congrats to both of July’s winners, and best of luck to August’s challengers. If you’re not already running with us this month, head over to the Challenges page, join in, and get running!

Congratulations to our challenge winners for the month of May!

• Most Miles: lasabur took simonji’s place at the top with 293.37 miles!
• Fastest 1 Mile: robottino keeps fastest mile honors with a time of 5′26”
• Fastest 3K: robottino again, with a time of 11′39”
• Fastest 5K: Jay35 takes the honors with a time of 19′17”
• Fastest 10K: Newcomer keithmichael blazes to the top with a time of 35′49”

Congrats to June’s winners, and best of luck to July’s challengers. If you’re not already running with us this month, head over to the Challenges page, join in, and get running!

Congratulations to our challenge winners for the month of May!

• simonji ran the Most Miles with 236.1 miles under his belt
• robottino ran the Fastest 1 Mile with a time of 5′23”
• Robi. LM picked up Fasted 3K honors with a time of 11′56”
• SundanceKid ran May’s Fastest 5K with a time of 20′16”
• lasabur is our Fastest 10K winner with a time of 44′09”

Keep up the great work, folks. Jump over to our Challenges page to get into the action for the month of June. May the best runners win!

400mToGo Challenges

We’ve been showing off our private Nike+ challenges since 400mToGo went live. The invite-only challenges began well before 400mToGo was a twinkle in Scott’s eye, and it’s been a blast sharing them with you. While the invite-only challenges have been a lot of fun for our friends and family, the 400mToGo team has decided we want to spread the challenge joy. Starting this month, all of the 400mToGo challenges will be open to the public.

Challenge Categories

The monthly challenge categories are Most Miles, Fastest 1 Mile, Fastest 3K, Fastest 5K, and Fastest 10K. We’ll also be opening up our Most Miles 2008 challenge. If you think you’re up for it, head over to the Challenges page and join up!

April’s Winners

Congrats to deewiles (400mToGo’s very own Cory) for winning the Most Miles April 2008 challenge. Major kudos to derekjmorris, a running machine, who swept the remaining April challenges. Keep up the hard work, guys. Things are about to get a lot more challenging.

Usually, when I login to my Nike+ account, I view my personal challenges and the 400mToGo challenges. However, the other day I was cruising around some of the other Nike+ content and I came across the Distance Club.

Distance Club Milestones
100MI, 500MI, 1000MI, 2000MI, 3000MI, 4000MI, and 5000MI

The the basic mission of 400mToGo is to appeal to Nike+ runners of all abilities. When I came across the Distance Club, I couldn’t believe the tremendous distances that some of my fellow Nike+ runners had logged. I was especially amazed at how many people have reached the top three milestones:

Milestone: Number of Runners
3000MI: 105
4000MI: 34
5000MI: 14

User ChuckJonard, one of the 14 at the 5000MI milestone, has logged a total of 8,728.13 miles at an average pace of 19 minutes 32 seconds. What an accomplishment! I’ve definitely found my newest source of inspiration. These amazing accomplishments prove, with persistence, patience, dedication, and determination, nothing is impossible.

Jamie, the Diabetic Runner, has put together two running challenges for the Diabetic Runner 2008 Challenge: the DR1K and the DR5H.

“I started this challenge for the vast community of blogging runners and diabetics. I’m hoping to inspire many to do great things, to push themselves to extraordinary heights, and to raise awareness of diabetes, and the United Nations’ designated “World Diabetes Day” held every year on November 14th.

…And no, you don’t have to be diabetic to join the challenge.”

The challenges are both year long challenges. The DR1K challenge is 1,000 miles in 2008, or about 20 miles per week. The DR5H is 500 miles, or about 10 miles per week.

I’m not diabetic myself, but Courtney’s story really got to me, and when I saw that she was involved in the DR Challenge I decided that I’d give it a go myself. I wanted to challenge myself to run more, to run harder, and I wanted to help spread the word. I chose the 500 mile challenge, and as I’ve only got about 60 miles under my belt this year, I’d better get moving!

Visit the DR Challenge page to sign up for either challenge. If you’re a Nike+ runner, you can scroll to the bottom of the page and find links to join the DR1K or the DR5H Nike+ challenges.

Good luck to all the Diabetic Challenge runners!

Gasp! You mean you can cheat technology?! You can, yes, but it’s not only morally wrong, it also won’t help you to become a better runner. We weren’t sure whether to publish this article or not because we certainly don’t condone any of these tactics, but just to prove that it is possible for an insidious runner to cheat the system and to highlight potential cheating with the Nike+ system, we’re going to share these ideas with you.

1. CREATE IMAGINARY RUNS
   Can’t be bothered to run, but you want to win a challenge? Simply use the Nike Plus Edit Web site to quickly create an XML file based on your imaginary 50-mile run before work today. Add the XML file to your iPod, and then before you know it, iTunes has uploaded your mileage to your open challenge(s). Pure evil personified!
2. TRICK iTUNES
   Did your run not go so well today? Wanted to run 10 miles but only ran two? No problem! Edit your most recent run before you upload it to Nike+, and trick iTunes into publishing your pretend workout!
3. CALIBRATION
   Calibrate your Nike+ incorrectly, on purpose. Tell your iPod that you are going to calibrate over one mile, but only run half a mile. Oh how impressed your friends will be when you slash your personal bests by 40% over the space of a few days!
4. MULTIPLE IPODS
   Why use one iPod when you can have two, or even three?! Attach a sensor to each running shoe and BOOM! A 10-mile run suddenly becomes a 20-mile upload. Slightly expensive, admittedly, but people with a lot of money are probably more likely to cheat than those who do not, don’t you think?
5. WEAR NIKE+ ALL THE TIME
   This is the least serious way to cheat as technically, it does involve exercise that you are responsible for. Simply wear your Nike+ device wherever you go! Walking around the house, strolling around the mall or the grocery store, all those footsteps soon add up! But why stop the evilness there? If a friend or a relative is going out somewhere, attach your chip to their shoes and ask them to record their mileage on your behalf!

Remember, you can cheat all you want online, but when it comes down to that real race against real people, we will all know who has been telling the truth and who has not. Be warned!

It’s been over a week since my last post. I haven’t been too lazy nor has life been uneventful in the world of running. To the contrary, I’ve been extremely busy. Usually I battle hills and fatigue, but this week I was in a fierce battle against my sinuses and a touch of the flu. Though my illness got a few good licks in, I do believe I’ve emerged victorious. Unfortunately, I missed the best weekend for running, as well as missing my own personal goal of reaching my 100-mile mark. It was sunny and in the 70s this past weekend and I was lying in bed with an achy body, sore throat and headaches like you couldn’t believe.

I’ve felt pretty good the past couple of days, but I won’t venture out for a run until Friday or Saturday. Because I got sick so late in my training for the Germantown Half Marathon, which is March 16th, I’ve had to alter my mental focus for that race. Before, I was really gunning to beat my St. Jude time, but now I’m going to shoot to finish. I’ve gotten up to nine miles in my training, so I’m pretty confident that I can finish without a bunch of problems, but I’m not anticipating beating any personal records.

Congrats to Derek for his awesome performances in the challenges.

Congratulations to Derek for his terrific clean sweep in the most miles, 1 mile, 3k and 5k challenges in February, well done! The March challenges are now under way and from this month forward, we have a monthly challenge open to all our readers and visitors. We’d be glad to have you run with us!

Now, please don’t take my post title the wrong way. It’s not a lack of creativity or dedication to the cause, but rather I believe Scott must’ve read my mind when he published his last post.

My mom’s training for the ING half marathon in Atlanta, GA. She wanted to spend some quality time with me, so we went running last Saturday. Our desired distance was eight miles. I was a little nervous because the last time I ran that distance, I ended up killing myself for the sake of having a better ranking in the challenges. This has been stated before, but I really feel that it can’t be reinforced enough: while it’s good to push yourself, you definitely SHOULDN’T over train.

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