For the last few months I've been participating in the Monthly Detours Program of the Texas Distance Challenge. The Monthly Detours feature custom 5k-10k virtual routes throughout the state. When the Detour location is announced each month, program directors publish a blog post describing it, its route, history, and nearby attractions. This has been not just a great way to add some motivation and variety into my running schedule, but also to learn about parts of the state I'm unfamiliar with and neat places to go and visit in hopefully the not too distant future.

For example, November's detour was Possum Kingdom Lake near Fort Worth. I had never heard of it before and learned all about it through the blog post published when it was announced to challenge participants.

The Possum Kingdom Detour challenge consisted of either running or walking 4.8 miles, which is the distance equivalent to Possum Kingdom's Johnson Peak Loop

When I completed that detour, I just went to the link provided by race directors and simply connected the results with my date, time, and distance from my Strava account, and a couple of weeks later received the challenge sticker and card from the race organizers. I have a neat collection already and it will continue to do so all the way through April 2021, when the challenge ends.

Besides the Monthly Detours, there are two other options you can choose from within the Texas Distance Challenge if you are interested in completing them either running or walking:

Solo Crossing: 814 individual miles
Team Crossing: 814 combined miles as a team

There are also options for cyclists to choose:
Solo Crossing: 814 individual miles
Team Crossing: 814 combined miles as a team
Solo Loop: 3,612 individual miles
Team Loop: 3,612 combined miles as a team

Regardless of which of these options appeals to you (or your friends), a neat feature of the program is that all miles can all be logged retroactively, meaning that any miles which you ran, walked, or cycled from July 1, 2020 can be counted towards your overall total in order to complete the challenge by April 30, 2021.

The swag you will receive first upon signup and then upon completion of the challenge is absolutely awesome and has been a nice incentive for me all along.