January Team Challenge

Everyone in the ZLDR groups can participate! It doesn’t matter your experience, if you can run a whole marathon or just walk a few kms per week, we want to include everyone, and everyone’s contribution will be important for your team. 

If you would prefer not to be on a team, you can run as an individual and track your distance on the individual leaderboard, which can be filtered by gender and age group.

You must create an account on this website to participate in the challenge because that is how we can track your submitted distance/points both for the individual leaderboard and the team points.  We ask you for some information about yourself for the following reasons:

1. Email Address – Your email address will be used as your login name for the website.  We may also use your email address to contact you if we have any questions during the challenge (especially if we are unable to reach you through Facebook, Strava, Zwift, etc).  In addition, you can perform a password reset by having a link sent to this email address.
2. Zwift/Facebook/Strava usernames – All runs that are submitted on this site must exist on either Zwift or Strava so they can be verified.  Also, all official team communications happen on Facebook Messenger chat, and so this is required for participating on a challenge team.
3. Running Habits – We ask a few questions during the sign-up process about your running habits so that we can try to make the teams as balanced as possible.  We want the challenge to be fun for everyone and so we do our best to put a mix of various running levels on the each team.
4. Age and Gender – Age range and gender is requested so that you can see your rankings on the individual leaderboard either overall, by age group and gender.  This information is not required, if you do not feel comfortable submitting it.  The only difference will be that you won’t show up in any of the age group/gender rankings if you do not provide this info.

This year there are two ways to participate:

On a Team

This is the original ZLDR challenge experience.  Participants are assigned to a team and the members of that team encourage each other to get in their daily running as well as work together to claim as many points as possible in the various challenges.  The teams rankings will be released on a weekly basis.  The challenges are designed to require team members to work together to maximize points, so it is very important that members communicate with each other on a regular basis.

Individually

For those who want to participate, but don’t feel they can commit to being a member of a team, there is now an option to run as an individual.  You will not be placed on a team, but you can still track your daily distance ran (with no caps) on the individual leaderboard.

The challenge will start on the first day of the month and end on the last day of the month.

For team-based runners, participants will be assigned to teams, and each team will have a leader (captain). Participants will log their total distance they ran each day whether done virtually (Zwift) or in real life (Strava Activity) on our website.  In addition to the daily distance, teams will have challenges to complete as a team to earn additional points.  Team rankings will be released on a weekly basis.  There is also an individual leaderboard that ranks all runners based on their total distance run during the challenge (the points cap only applies to team points), and this leaderboard can be viewed with all runners, per gender and per age group.

For individual runners (non-team), you will track your daily distance the same as team-based runners, but your distance will only show on the individual leaderboard.

Team points will be capped at at a maximum of 10km (10 points) per day. We understand that the safety of our members is important, so we decided to cap the points to prevent some people from running more than they should. For the personal results, the distance will not be capped, so we can stalk how far our top runners can go, and give them a push.

For those that run more than 10 km a day, you still submit your full distance for the day.  You will contribute 10 points to your team points, and the full distance you ran will be added to your ranking on the individual leaderboard.  For example, if you submit 15km (or 9.3 miles) for the day, your team will get 10 points from you for the day, but on the individual leaderboard your total distance will increase by 15 km.

This challenge is for fun and the primary purpose is to allow people to get to know other members better.  There are no prizes for the winners (either team or individual), so please do not run more than you feel that you should, allow your legs some rest along the way, and listen to your body, always!  

When signing up for the challenge, you will be asked to answer a few questions about your running level that will allow us to rank you based on your experience. After the signup closes, we will split people into different ranks, and then evenly distribute the participants in the teams, trying to make it as fair as possible. So please, be honest when answering the questions, as this will help us make the challenge as balanced and fun as possible.

Every week there will be a new mission for your team to complete as a group.  The missions are often require the team members to coordinate and work together to maximize the points earned.  To see the missions for this challenge, please look at the Missions page before signing up.  The missions will not be changed mid-challenge, but feedback can be taken into consideration for the next challenge.

After the challenge starts, you will be able to log in with the information you used to sign up, and there will be a page for you to submit your runs/walks.

You will have to choose the day of the run/walk, and type in the total distance achieved that day. Your points will be capped at 10 km/10 points.  This is to prevent those with a strong competitive spirit from being tempted into pushing too hard and injuring themselves.  Even though we will cap the points, you are allowed to submit the total distance you achieved, that will show in your personal record. So if you run 50km,  you will contribute with 10km worth of points for your team, but in your total record it will show 50km.

On the completion of the week (Monday through Sunday) you will have until Tuesday, 11:00pm UTC, to enter your weekly distances. After this time all entries will be blocked.

Any mileage you submit for the day is subject to verification by either a member of the challenge committee or a team captain.  Please make sure that you only submit mileage that is listed on either Zwift or Strava (and as mentioned above, you will submit multiple runs/walks as a single combined entry into the website).

As has been mentioned, the primary goal of the ZLDR challenge is to foster stronger relationships between ZLDR members.  For this reason, many of the missions that teams complete to gain points have been designed around people working together to complete the goals with as many points as possible.  People who have joined a team are expected to be in regular communication with the team so that each team has the best chance of getting as many points as possible.  People who join and team and then do not participate cause teams to earn less points in the missions and are drag on team morale.

We realize that not everyone has the time or availability to be fully engaged in the challenge and that is why we also have the option to sign up as an individual.  Individual runners are still participants in the challenge who can submit their daily distance and have their results included in the individual leaderboard, but there are no expectations around needing to communicate with a team.

So choose the option that is the best fit for you!

The following are the expectations for a team participant.  Many of these expectations are statements that you must agree to on the team sign-up form.

1. You must have a Facebook/Facebook Messenger account.  This is the official means of communication for the challenge.  Your team captain will set up a FB Messenger chat room for your team to communicate and coordinate on the missions.  If you need to reach out to your captain or someone on the challenge committee about an issue submitting your distance, then Facebook is the best way.  Team captains will be invited to a special Facebook group with the challenge committee members so that announcements can be made (and questions asked/answered) for distribution to each team.  In short, there are a lot of communications that happen via Facebook/Messenger and so not having an account will make it very difficult to stay engaged with your team.
2. You are expected to check in with your team on a regular basis.  The general recommendation is on a daily basis, especially when it comes to coordinating for some of the team missions.  This is just a guideline, as it just depends on what frequency of communication will keep you engaged with the team.  It is up to your captain’s discretion as to whether you are engaged enough.  In addition, we understand that people my have work trips, vacations, sickness, injury, etc.  Just let your team know if you’ll be unavailable for any length of time, and then there won’t be any problems or confusion.
3. If you have been assigned to a team and the captain is unable to reach you, then you may be removed from the team and moved to being an individual runner.  This is at the discretion of your captain, so once the challenge starts, be sure to keep an eye on your Facebook messenger account.
4. If you get injured or sick and feel like you won’t be able to run/walk for a longer stretch of time, please communicate with your captain.  We can work with you to either move you to be individual runner, or perhaps leave you on the team as an inactive member and add a replacement.  We don’t want anyone to feel excluded because of uncontrollable circumstances, so we’ll work together to figure out the best solution.

The team captain is a very important role for the challenge, and with each challenge we need people to volunteer to be team captains.  The more team captains that we have, the more people who can participate in the challenge without the teams becoming too big.

Team captains do have a few extra responsibilities, but that doesn’t mean they have to do all of the work.  A few responsibilities will need to be performed by the captain, but others can be delegated to other willing members of the team.  Some examples are:

Captain-Only Duties

• Captains will be added to a private Facebook group where you will get information from the challenge committee throughout the month that is relayed back to the team members.
• Captains can also bring issues back to the committee if there is something that needs to be addressed (scoring problems, website problems, replacements for non-responding members)
• Captains will report weekly mission scores to the committee (for missions that don’t require a public post with results)
• Captains will need to set up their team’s Facebook messenger chat group, invite all members, and verify they are still committed to being a part of the team.  Captains can work with the committee to reach out to anyone not responding through other means (email, etc).  Last resort is that the committee can swap out the non-responding member for someone on the waiting list.

Other Duties That Can Be Delegated

• Team missions will often require scheduling and coordination.  Someone needs to be the “leader” when it comes to compiling availability and setting a schedule
• Keeping communication/banter/chatting going between the team members to help everyone get to know each other better
• Recording/Compiling/Summarizing the results of the team missions for submission
• Writing status reports in the ZLDR facebook group with results of certain missions (if they require publicly posting results)
• General cheerleading to keep team morale higher
• (Friendly) trash talk against the other teams

…and likely a lot of other smaller things depending on what the mission is for that week.  But again, the captain is ultimately responsible that those things get done, but can request help from the team to get things completed.

Team Scoring

• Every KM a team member runs/walks for the day will earn 1 point, up to a daily maximum of 10 points, per person.
• Each week will have an assigned mission that will give teams the chance to earn additional points for the team.
• Some weeks may also have a bonus mission (often non-running related) that can also earn extra points for the team.
• There will be 2 extra days after the end of a week for all submissions to be entered before weekly scores are calculated.
  • Late submissions will not be accepted after this 2 day period
• After the cutoff, the scores for that week will be posted on this website, as well as the cumulative total for all the weeks completed up to that point.

While this challenge was designed as a friendly competition, the primary goal is for ZLDR members to get to know each other better.  There are no prizes for the winning team, so let’s keep things friendly and fun.  The teams will be made up of people of various fitness levels, and some may be either new to running or returning from an injury.  Let’s make sure we encourage each other to achieve our own personal running goals during this challenge and not push people to over-exert themselves for the sake of team points.

It is recommended that as a team you choose a uniform (shirt and short minimum) and put this uniform on everyone’s avatar during this week.  This will help with team spirit and make everyone more recognizable for in-game photos required for some challenges.

For this challenge, each team member that completes the distance of 10k per day for 5 days out of the week will earn bonus points for their team.

Mission Admin: Jamie Caesar

Rules:

1. Team members must complete 10 km per day for 5 days during the mission week.
2. 10 km is the cumulative distance for the day.  You can do it all at once, across multiple runs, run it all, walk it all, run/walk mix.  How you accomplish the distance is up to you.
3. Please let your captains know that you’ve completed the weekly mission as soon as possible so they can keep an accurate and  timely account of team members who will be awarded the mission points
4. Captains, please private message to the committee member who is leading this challenge mission with a final list of names who completed this challenge for your team (This person will be communicated via your captain closer to time)
5. No pics are necessary unless there is a question about an activity and specifically requested by a committee member

Points:

Each team member who completes this mission will earn 100 points for their team.

Examples:

1. A team member runs 12 km every day of the week (5 days).  That team member will earn 50 points for daily runs (5 x 10 points), plus an additional 100 points for completing this challenge.  On the individual leaderboard, the runner will have earned 60 km of distance (5 x 12) and will be ranked based on that amount.
2. A different team member run 20km on Wednesday and Thursday, 10km on Friday and Saturday, and 2km on Sunday.  This team member will earn 42 points for the team (40 points (4 x 10) for Wed-Sat, 2 points for Sun).   They did not complete the challenge, and so does not earn any mission points for the team.   The individual leaderboard will show 62km (20+20+10+10+2) of distance.

Collect one fun fact from each of your team members. It can be running or non running- whatever each person chooses. Submit the list of: 1. Team members name and 2. Their fun fact to the mission admin.  Make these fun as they will be used later in the challenge as a mission!

Mission Admin: Meghan Brown

NOTE: No points are awarded for this part of the mission.  Points will be awarded during Part 2.

The goal of this event is to complete as many ZLDR events as possible.  Let’s get as many folks as we can into these events and make them a ton of fun!

Mission Admin: Megan Cooke Carcagno

Rules:

1. Sign up and complete the full ZLDR event (start to finish) at ANY pace (walk, jog, run…)
2. Go at any pace, just complete it (the full time or distance)
3. Rack up as many events as you safely can throughout the week.
4. Each completed ZLDR event one is worth 10 points per event/person.

Details to be released soon

This mission will have your team scattered across all of the worlds in Zwift to explore various running routes.

Mission Admin: Russ Miller

Rules:

1. There are 10 worlds to run this week (France, Innsbruck, London, Makuri Islands, New York, Paris, Richmond, Scotland, Watopia, Yorkshire)
2. Each runner gets to run once in world
3. A run of the complete route is 10 points
4. If the run is done as pair a bonus 10 points are awarded
5. A run log will be sent to captains to share, and log the runs to return to the committee on completion
6. Photos will need to be taken at the end of each route to show completion.  This photo must be turned into your captain, who may be asked to present certain photos during random scoring spot checks.

MORE BONUS POINTS

1. ANY runner who does 6 worlds earns 25 bonus points
2. ANY runner who does 8 worlds earns another 25 bonus points
3. ANY runner who does all 10 worlds earns another 50 bonus point

The selfie mission is a quick and easy way to earn some points for your team!  Instead of the usual “match your avatar” selfie, you’ll instead need to take a selfie that is somehow related to your team name.  You can still do the usual “match your selfie” picture, but it will be less points than one based on your team theme.

Mission Admin: Megan Cooke Carcagno

Rules:

1. You must take a picture of yourself in an outfit that fits with the theme/name of your team.
2. Pictures must be taken and posted to a new photo album in the ZLDR Facebook group
   1. Go to ZLDR page on FB.
   2. Select “albums” on far right.
   3. Select “create album” and upload your pics.
   4. Tag Megan Cooke Carcagno and Kevin de Luca in your album
3. Any pic not added to this album will not be awarded points
4. All pics must have your name and your team name.  Points will be deducted if this is not the case.
5. Points will be allocated from 0-1000, for the entire team, based on number of contributing runners, originality, creativity and overall similarity to the theme or avatar.  This is impartial yet subjective judging by a member of the committee who is not participating on a team.
6. Each participant will receive credit for a single uploaded selfie
7. The following things will NOT count for the challenge:
   1. Using pictures that were not taken specifically for the challenge (such as digging up old photos that might related to the team theme)
   2. Photoshopping only a face into another photo.   We at least need to be able to see some level of dress-up was attempted in the final submission.

The selfie mission is a quick and easy way to earn some points for your team!

Here is the first of the new missions for the 2024 January Challenge.  We will be bringing the trivia running events to the challenge for some bonus team points!

Mission Admins (Quiz Masters):  Pete Laporte & Meghan Brown

Rules:

• 6 different events will be scheduled across various time zones to give as many people an opportunity to participate as possible
  • Some will be led by Pete, and some led by Meghan
• The trivia matches will be set up as Zwift events, so we don’t have to worry about following and getting invites.   Just sign up in advance like any other event!
  • Event dates/times will be posted in the near future so that people have time to figure out which ones they can attend. Captains will distribute the list to their teams.
  • The events will be held at May Field so that nobody will get out of range of the Quiz Master
  • This is not a running challenge.  Running and even walking is optional.   It is up to you if you want to run or walk to get in your distance, or just stand on the track to play the game.
  • The meetup will be scheduled for 1 hour.
• There will be around 20 questions during the event, although the Quiz Master will be prepared with more questions in case we have a bunch of smarty pants in the event.  It is also possible that 20 may not get answered in the hour.
  • The first person to guess the correct answer (out loud in the chat) will earn the quiz point for that question.
  • Contestants can make multiple guesses, so if you should out a wrong guess, feel free to try again (and again).
  • If multiple people guess at nearly the same time, the winner will be the first to show up in the Quiz Master’s chat feed.
    • If 2 people answer at the same time, each person will see their response in their chat log as soon as they press Send, but then has to be sent to Zwift before anyone else receives it.
    • Both people will see their own answer before the other person’s because their own answer instantly went into their chat log while the other person’s had to cross the Internet to reach them.
    • The Quiz Master has to receive both responses over the Internet, and so the person who the Quiz Master sees first will be the winner
    • To summarize:  Your chat may show your answer first, but if it did not reach the Quiz Master first, it was not the winning answer.  Screenshots of your answer first will not overrule the one the Quiz Master received first.
  • The Quiz Master has the authority to award “Funny Points” at their own discretion.  If you don’t know the answer to the trivia question, but give a response that makes the Quiz Master laugh, they can award a quiz point to the funny person IN ADDITION to the person who answers correctly.
• Team Points will be awarded as follows:
  • 100 points to first place (the most quiz points)
  • 50 points to second place
  • 25 points to third place
  • 10 points to every person who joins in the event, regardless of whether they earn any quiz points.  (So don’t skip out on joining in if you can make it)
    • This is in addition to the points for 1st, 2nd or 3rd place
  • Ties within the 1st-3rd rankings will be solved by whatever method the Quiz Master deems appropriate during that event.
• There are no limits around who joins the event
  • Multiple members of a team may join the same event.  They still compete individually for one of the 3 places.  Points are not pooled by team.
  • A team member can join multiple quiz sessions

Mission Admin: Megan Cooke Carcagno

Rules:

1. A runner will run/walk for distance in Mayfield for 60′. Their points will reflect how far they went in KM. If they went 10km, they will get 10 points. If they went 14.2km, they will get 14.2 points.
2. Points will be quadrupled for any individual who completes their hour as a meet-up with one teammate (for example, runner 1 and runner 2 complete 9.5 km and 12.5 km. Together, they score 88
3. The captain will add up everyone’s 60′ score to submit for total points.
4. To get the points bonus, the captains must verity the meet-up was created and completed by both team members.

Mission Admin: Russ Miller

Rules:

1. Captains will be sent pictures of 5 locations
2. Find each one a take a selfie in front of them, showing the distance run in km
3. 10 points for each selfie + 1 point per KM run, based on the distance showing on the selfie
4. 50 BONUS POINTS FOR A PHOTO AT RADIO TOWER (RUN MUST BE OVER 9KM)
5. Captains will get a run log sheet for this event to submit to committee.
6. This week find the scavenger item (picture to be disclosed in Captains group at the start of week 3) on a run and take a Zwift screenshot/picture for bonus points.