Strava – The Escape Plan

Strava – The Escape plan has the goal of getting people to move 15 minutes a day 5 times a week for four weeks. This includes all sports from Alpine Skiing to Yoga with walking, hiking, kayaking, cycling, swimming and more. In other words your walk to the shops, the café and the work commute are included.

With so many sports activities included in this challenge, it should be easy for everyone to achieve. You could walk to work the first day, cycle the second, swim in the evening on the third, play on one of the elliptical machines on the fourth and follow a yoga session on the fifth. There is no reason not to succeed. As I look through the list every one of these sports would be practised for extended periods of time beyond just 15 minutes. I can’t see many people going for a fifteen-minute hike. I would expect it to be for longer.

Most of the challenges on Strava are based on specific sports and specific distances. In these situations, you can compete with others and see whether you are in the top ten. In this case, you simply log a fifteen-minute activity and you’re done five days a week four weeks in a row.

This is a habit-forming challenge for those who either do not do fifteen minutes of exercise in one go on a daily basis or for those who never consider a fifteen-minute walk from the train station to the office as an activity.

As a point of reference, I am on day 71 of the move streak goal. It’s set at between 400-500 calories per day and requires at least an hour of walking to reach. I don’t need to “get moving”. I need to continue moving.