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Run This Year is a free running challenge designed to help you stay consistent, build a running routine and work towards a longer-term goal throughout the year.

Yes. Run This Year is completely free to join. There is no entry fee for any of the challenges. The digital badges, challenge hub and leaderboard are also completely free.

You can join three annual challenges (from January to December 2026)

• 1000 KM
• 2026 KM
• 2026 MILES

Choose the distance that best fits your running goals. All three challenge clubs are housed in Strava so you must have the app installed to join.

You don’t need to run a specific amount every day. The targets are annual goals, so you can run more on some days and less on others.

For 1000 KM, the average is around 2.74KM per day, 19.23KM per week or 83.33KM per month.

For 2026 KM, the average is around 5.55KM per day, 38.73KM per week or 168.83KM per month.

For 2026 MILES, the average is around 5.55 miles per day, 38.96 miles per week or 168.83 miles per month.

Run This Year was created and is run by Luke Brand, a runner who wanted to create a simple way for people to set themselves a long-term running goal and stay motivated throughout the year.

What started as a Strava running challenge has grown into a wider community of runners taking on annual distance goals.

Run This Year is currently a volunteer project and is not run by a paid team. The aim is to keep the challenges free and create something useful and motivating for runners.

The best way to support the project is completely free. Follow the Run This Year Strava clubs, encourage other runners, like activities, leave comments, share the challenges and invite other runners to join.

Every bit of encouragement helps the community grow and makes the challenge more enjoyable for everyone taking part.

Open Strava:

• Click on your profile picture in the top left and scroll down to ‘Statistics’. There you should see your year to date distance.

By default Strava sets this to KM, but you can change it to MILES:

• Click on the profile setting cog in the top right corner of your profile page.
• Scroll down to ‘Units of Measurement‘. There you can switch between Imperial and Metric.

Then simply go to the Challenge Hub (on the ‘Join a challenge‘ page) and use your current YTD distance to track challenge progress and schedule your running sessions to stay on pace for your respective challenge distance.

Confirm you have completed the challenge distance by checking your Strava statistics.

Go to the Challenge Hub (on the ‘Join a challenge’ page) and scroll to the form at the bottom:

• Fill in the form with your name and challenge completed (1000 km, 2026 km or 2026 miles).
• Go to the ‘Challenge leaderboard’ page and refresh it.
• Search for your name to save your digital finisher medal. This can be downloaded to your photos and shared on Strava or any other social media platform.

Congratulations on completing a Run This Year challenge!