Helly Hansen Winter Duel
Six and a half years ago, Warriorwoman and I had a challenge within a challenge (sorry about the broken links to the pics). Salomon had asked us both to undertake personal running challenges and so we decided to make things more interesting by seeing who could complete their challenge first. My challenge was to run 100 miles in a month. I know that’s not many for some of you, but it was a lot to me then and I still haven’t run over 100 miles in a month since. Warriorwoman’s challenge was, I think, to run past each station on the Circle Line (this was when it was still a circle. Well, a loop, anyway).
I am far too much of a laydee and noble sportswoman to say who won that particular challenge (clue: IT WAS MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE) but now we’re having a rematch in the form of the Helly Hansen Winter Duel.
Participants in the duel download the app, sign up and the app will set you up with a duelling partner matched to the level of running you’re currently doing or you can choose a partner. I signed in with my Facebook account and there was Warriorwoman’s little face peeking out of my screen and as I think we’re probably on equal terms when it comes to fitness, laziness and can-I-be-arsed-to-go-out-for-a-run-ness, I challenged her to a duel, which she accepted.
We started off really well, as you can see.
The challenge lasts for five weeks and at the end of the five weeks, the participants with the highest number of miles recorded will get the chance to duel face-to-face at a Helly Hansen training event.
It’s simple to log your miles. You just click that big button you can see in the photo above that says START TRAINING and the app records your time and distance (as far as I can see, it’s purely a stopwatch and map, so I could, in theory, cheat and cycle thirty miles but that would be cheating and cheating is bad and Warriorwoman would never believe I ran thirty miles in one go anyway). When you finish your run, press stop and it shows you how far ahead or behind your partner you are in that current week.
As we’ve both got half-marathons coming up, I reckon this challenge will give us the motivation to actually do a bit of training. It certainly gave me more incentive to get out for the six miles I should have done on Saturday.
For more information, watch the video below, or visit the Helly Hansen website.