Virtual Strides Blog

It’s hard to believe, but Virtual Strides has been around for over eight years now. During that time, we’ve hosted 96 consecutive monthly virtual races, 5 special events, and 130 partner races. We’re proud to have raised well-over $1 million for charity through our events, and we’ve loved every “stride” of the journey. While we’re [Read More…]

About 6 months ago, we announced Custom Challenges on Virtual Strides, giving participants the ability to choose ANY distance they want for their virtual race and also the option to choose Biking counting Steps as the mode for their virtual race, instead of being limited to only running and walking. Due to popular demand, we [Read More…]

We are happy to announce an exciting new feature that will give Virtual Strides participants a lot more flexibility with their goal setting for our virtual races. In addition to our standard 5k, 10k, and Half Marathon distances, participants can now choose a Custom Challenge option during the registration process. With Custom Challenges, participants can choose [Read More…]

I can still remember the moment when the idea hit me six years ago. I had just wrapped up my 5th year as the volunteer Race Director for what had become one of the most popular 5k races in the state of Florida. I had helped the Turtle Krawl grow from a local fun run [Read More…]

When we started Virtual Strides back in 2014, our idea for a “virtual race” was for it to be an alternative to a real running race, with the main difference being that you would complete it whenever and wherever you wanted to, instead of everyone starting at the same time in the same place. So, [Read More…]

Here in Brevard County, Florida, with zero reported COVID-19 cases to date (yes, we know they are coming), we are already seeing the effects of the coronavirus on our local community. For the foreseeable future, all large gatherings – including running events – are being cancelled per recommendations from the State of Florida and the Centers [Read More…]

When we ship your medals is usually up to you (see here), but unfortunately, Hurricane Dorian has other plans for us here in Melbourne, Florida this week. Our office building closed down Saturday morning and will not reopen until after the storm passes. We shipped everything we could on Friday, but any orders placed after [Read More…]

Has it really been more than a year and a half since our last blog post? Um, yeah, sorry about that. It’s not that we haven’t had exciting things we’ve wanted to share – there have been plenty communicated through our email list and on our Facebook page – they just haven’t made it into [Read More…]

Sometimes after natural disasters strike, you see the best of humanity during the clean up and recovery process. People once divided by race, religion, politics and more, come together in these times of need to simply lend a hand to their fellow human beings. It is a beautiful thing that I have been fortunate enough [Read More…]

9/15 – FINAL UPDATE Internet access has been restored! We will get completely caught up with shipping tomorrow. Remember, we ship medals AFTER you upload your results or at the end of each race period (whichever comes first), unless you elect to have your medals sent prior to doing so, which you can do with [Read More…]

By Kristen Tinker Athlete, Wife, Mom, Fitness Guru Medals motivate. They symbolize dreams, sweat equity, memories, and success, regardless of the distance. Don’t believe me? The fact grown adults will wear a Boston Marathon medal on the airplane ride home 24 hours after having run 26.2 miles is testament to the emotional power that one [Read More…]

Because we strive to (almost) always have all available race medals in stock and (almost) never have shipping delays, we make the medals for each of our virtual races long before we open registration for each event. That way, the minute registration is open for a given event, we already have medals available for those of you [Read More…]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 1, 2017 The world’s leading virtual race provider, Virtual Strides, has announced that effective immediately, VirtualStrides.com has begun offering in-person, motivational experts as an additional service to virtual race participants. This optional virtual race add-on has been designed for people who feel they need a little extra in-person encouragement to help get [Read More…]

tl;dr version: Virtual Strides now offers optional custom premium printed bibs. Yay! Full version: Long ago, we made the decision to not include printed bibs with our virtual race registrations. There were a number of reasons for this: Surveys we conducted early on indicated that most participants didn’t care about receiving printed bibs. Printing and mailing bibs costs money and [Read More…]

Thanks to constantly-improving smartphone technology, there are several apps available for both iPhones and Android phones that will help you track your running and walking by measuring your total time, distance, calories burned, and more. Most apps will produce maps of your route and some have social features as well, allowing you to connect with friends to keep each [Read More…]

Virtual Strides is a community of people who participate in virtual races all over the world. It’s not just about earning great medals while raising money for charity, but also motivating each other to reach our individual fitness goals. There’s lots of encouragement, support and congratulations. We recently put a call out to the Virtual Strides community [Read More…]

Hello, friends! I’m Mark, the Founder of Virtual Strides. I won’t always be the one writing our blog posts, but I wanted to be the first to welcome you to this new part of our website. So without further ado, welcome to the Virtual Strides blog! Why are we adding a blog? For a few reasons, [Read More…]