Wild Challenges

To take part in Wild Challenges you will need to:

Become a Wild Challenger by buying the addon
Have a Strava account that is connected to your Wild Things account (both free & premium Strava accounts work). See your Account Details to check whether your Strava account is connected & if not simply hit the 'connect to Strava' button (NB this will only be visible if you are a VIP Member OR you have already purchased the addon)

You do NOT need to be a VIP Member of Wild Things but being one will give you half price access to the Wild Challenger addon.

There are 2 types of Wild Challenge – Flash Challenges and Collection Challenges.

These are short, quick-fire challenges, that span as little as a weekend or as much as two or three weeks.
Each challenge focuses on one of three key running or hiking metrics – distance, time or vertical gain – and the goal is simply to accumulate as much distance, moving time or vertical gain as you can within the allocated window. There is also a Combo Challenge that combines both distance AND vertical gain.
Importantly, any run you do within the time given will count, regardless of the surface you run on (yes, even road!) or whether or not the route you take is one featured in the Wild Things Trail Directory.
Using your Strava data we will then simply compute the total distance/vertical gain/moving time that you accumulate over the prescribed time period and display it on a real-time Leaderboard so you can see how you are going and how your efforts stack up against other Wild Challengers.
As with other Leaderboards on the site (Wild Explorers, FKTs) you will be able to filter the Flash Challenge Leaderboard by age, gender and level of experience in order to ‘level the playing field’.

Collections are compilations of 20 great runs, each with a theme and each of which is sponsored by a Wild Things Partner.

Collection Challenges will take place over a longer time period than the Flash Challenges – anything from one month to 6 months.
Each time you complete a run from the nominated Collection you will receive Challenge Points that will be added to the Challenge Leaderboard, which once again can be filtered several ways to level the playing field.
You can earn Challenge Points by running as many different routes from the Collection as you can (we’ll help you keep count!) OR by running the same one(s) multiple times. This means you do not need to be able to travel extensively in order to rack up the points.

Each Challenge comes with a prize pool – anything from Wild Things merchandise, shop credits & free or extended VIP Membership to some cool sponsor-provided product up to the value of $1,000!
At the end of each Wild Challenge you will be able to see the final Leaderboard and where you placed (with or without applying filters). But in line with our ethos of encouraging Participation over Performance, the overall Challenge winners (those at the head of the Leaderboard) will not necessarily win the prizes.
Instead, each Challenge participant will earn chances in a prize draw based on how much distance, vertical gain or moving time (Flash Challenges) or Challenge Points (Collection Challenges) they have accumulated. So, by doing more you will increase your chances of winning a prize, BUT doing less will not preclude you from the chance of winning something pretty cool.

If you have an Instagram account you can post pictures from Challenge runs that you do using the unique hashtag that goes with each Challenge. In many cases this will give you extra chances to win prizes.
Your pics need to be posted to your main Instagram page NOT to Stories.
All pics that are correctly posted and hashtagged will appear on the Challenge page of this site. A great way for all to share the experience with other Wild Challengers!

We are guaranteeing at least 30 Wild Challenges a year and a total prize pool worth at least $15,000 a year.

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