How Racery’s personal trek and digital awards motivate one virtual racer

William, 73, has been logging miles with Racery for nearly three years.
William has logged Racery miles for nearly 3 years.

Throughout four years of programming and supporting Racery, our staff has repeatedly seen that everyone relates differently to exercise and motivation.

Some of us enjoy the competion, others get a kick out of maintaining streaks. Some think about rewards (ice cream), and others like pushing their own distance limits. Some people enjoy the satisfaction of printing and framing our race awards and mounting them on the wall. Some of us race to inspire, others to be inspired. Some people like seeing their miles add up, day after day, week after week, year after year. Some of us think about living to 100. Some people say Racery’s email each day at 4.30pm (EST!) gently asking “have you exercised today?” reminds them to get out the door. How easily we forget, right?

Everyone’s story is slightly different.

As a reminder of this, we recently got the wonderful note below from William (@wm), a virtual racer who has been running with us for nearly 3 years. As his experience shows, virtual miles can add up!
I am William, the 73 year old that began with Racery 2 years and 8 months ago with the two Acadia National Park races, The Havana Nights Race, and the Baja California Virtual Race. … I have the certificates framed and placed on my living room wall to inspire others as I winter in our over 55 park here in Mission, Texas.  Thank you for fixing that problem in April so that I can continue to log miles on the 4707 mile Disney World to Denali Trek.  I would have had it finished by now, but I had to stop in the summer for a few weeks until I could get a pacemaker implant.  It was successful.  As of last night, I have 4592 of the 4707 miles logged, so I have 115 miles to finish and should be done in 2-3 weeks.  After I finish and mount that certificate on the wall, I will be looking for another trek to replace that one. This has been a large part of my daily routine that I try to keep going.