Make it your own
Want to make your challenge unique? Not your first time doing it? Need some extra motivation? Add your own angle to your quest…
REWARD YOURSELF
Plan rewards for every 100 miles (Fiona Newton gets herself a new bit of gear) and put them on your Progress Chart. And don’t forget to mark each milestone memorably. The power of positive reinforcement is great!
BEAT YOUR HIGH SCORE
Aim for 10% higher final mileage for this year than last – or aim to hit 1000 miles one month quicker. That’s great progress!
TURBO-CHARGE TIME
Double your self-improvement by using your daily walks as study time. Andrew Collings walked to work and used the time to learn Welsh and listen to history podcasts en route.
KEEP A JOURNAL
Never forget this year! Scrapbook, doodle and diarise your walks for a record of the seasons changing and your big adventure. ‘What a joy it’s been’ says Laura Woodhead of hers.
COMPLETE A VIRTUAL JOURNEY
Kim Dominguez is taking two years to walk the virtual length of Canada. New for 2021, you can sign up for Walk1000miles+ and plot your progress on a virtual route from Land’s End to John o’Groats.
GO ‘BOOTS ON’
If you’ve counted every step before, try counting only ‘boots on’ miles – planned walks rather than everyday pottering for a sterner challenge.
START A TICKLIST
Use your 1000-mile quest as a booster for an even bigger ambition – like starting to walk all the Wainwrights (Lake District hills) or collecting all the geocaches in your area. Dianne Mcleish aimed for 10 Munros or Corbetts (Scottish mountains over 3000ft/2500ft respectively): “I never thought that I would do a Munro on my own as I wasn’t confident with my map reading, but I have achieved it on my way to 1000!”
BECOME A LITTER LEGEND
Pick a bit of litter on every path you walk for a radiant glow of goodness! Fiona Robertson did: “On my 1000 I’ve cleaned my village, my favourite beach and even the school I work at, and now the children at my school regularly pick up litter too. It feels great!”
AIM FOR CAR-FREE DAYS
Can you aim to be car-free for 2, 3 or 4 days a week? Good for planet, wallet and you. Sarah Mudhar aimed for 4: “It wasn’t as tough as I expected and had the added bonus of me just buying what I needed at the shops rather than a whole load of randomness!”
DO A LONG-DISTANCE PATH IN LEGS
Tackle one of our National Trails or a local waymarked route in manageable 1, 2 or 3-day chunks, in the year you walked 1000 miles AND (eg) the Pennine Way.
WALK EVERY STREET
Can you really say you know you hometown until you’ve walked every street?
SAVE A POUND A MILE
Nicky Brow saves a pound a mile and donates blocks of months to charity. Or you could do something amazing with that grand at the end of your challenge!
WALK THE YEAR!
Go massive in 2021 and aim for a huge 2021 miles – and motivate yourself with the thought there’s a 2000-mile Completer medal just for you!
GO BY THE BOOK!
Walk every route in a guidebook that catches your eye. Andy Martin picked the Ordnance Survey’s 100 Outstanding British Walks: “In my third year of this incredible challenge I wanted to do something that would give my walking more variety. The book’s walks contributed 636 miles to my total and take me to all 15 National Parks!”
And relax...
Especially when nagging questions like ‘Am I falling behind?’ rear their ugly heads. Here’s why you shouldn’t worry...
1 It’s totally irrelevant what other people are doing. This challenge pits you against only ONE other competitor – the alternative you who said ‘No’ to being bothered to do it. Every time you walk, even an ill-tempered 20-minute march in the rain before bed, you’re kicking their ass!
2 Time is NOT ‘running out’. 12 months is a huge amount of time, and the clock only started the day you did – not 1 Jan (unless that’s when you did).
3 2.74 miles is not a feeble minimum OR a daily-rotating scythe you must jump or be chopped down by. It’s simply the average you will have done when you hit 1000 using every day of 12 months. Some days you will do more, many days you will do less. Remember: if you missed two whole months your daily target average to hit 1000 miles in a year would rise scarcely half a mile, to 3.27 miles a day – perhaps 10 minutes more than your original target. Your challenge is NOT in peril if you have a few crummy days.
4 Don’t pander to motivation. Practise discipline. Motivation is flaky. But discipline KNOWS when you hit the pavements and paths for 45 minutes’ or an hour’s walk you WILL be glad you did it. And you’ll be another chunk closer to your goal.
5 Be kind to yourself, but be firm with the self-doubt that’s trying to hold you back from (A) DOING it and (B) ENJOYING it. Because you CAN and you WILL!