10 June 2020, 11am
RunCzech, which organises races which attract over 120,000 participants a year, has come up with the “Česko běží dál” (Czech Republic keeps on running) Challenge as a way of getting runners to compete on real courses in a new kind of “mixed reality”.
In its earlier FreeRun program 90 running courses, each 5km long and certified by the Czech Athletics Federation, were created, maintained and staffed with an experienced running coach.The network of courses is managed and navigated using the RunCzech app.
The main challenge is to run a total of 125km, whenever possible, on any of the 5km FreeRun courses over a period of 90 days. People can choose to run distances from 5km–40km, or set a goal of travelling around the country and running as many FreeRun courses as possible within the allotted time.
“The goal is to have one million kilometres completed,” says RunCzech President Carlo Capalbo. “[It] will be a way for runners to compete, to compare their results, to have a feeling of solidarity and companionship until it’s safe for us to all come together again. We believe this could be successfully replicated in other countries.”
Each participant will receive a digital diploma, and those who complete the entire 125K challenge will receive a special digital medal. There will be ranking for 5km, 10km, 20km, 40km and 125km distances. In addition, the fastest runners will earn various awards. RunCzech will carefully monitor the courses to identify where there are large gatherings of runners and foster friendly competition between cities to see who can bring out more participants.