This weekend marks the holiday halfway point for a campaign spurring Montgomery County residents to put in some serious foot time on area trails.
The inaugural “100 Miles in 100 Days” kicked off Memorial Day and culminates Labor Day.
Marion Joyce, manager of communityoutreach for Montgomery County Parks and Planning, said citizens who sign up and walk or run 100 miles between those two holidays will be awarded prizes and certificates recognizing their efforts.
So far no one has completed the 100-mile goal, but she said she’s hoping by August the event will have some early finishers.
It is hard to say just how many locals are participating since they log in their own miles and then come to the parks Department at the end to collect their goodies.
Joyce said as long as the trail is in the Montgomery system it can be counted in the contest.
The parks department doesn’t keep track of how many people use its facilities annually, but Joyce said trails are definitely the most popular.
“And of those, The Capital Crescent Trail is the most used — hundreds of people go there per daylight hour,” she said. “Overall, we have 395 parks on 32,900 acres, so it’s a huge system.”
Joyce said trail planning coordinator Lyn Coleman came up with the creative fitness push because she’s the type of person who would be logging in those kinds of miles anyway.
“She keeps track on her belt and walks up to 16,000 steps a day,” Joyce said.
In the past, Montgomery County has challenged residents to walk 75 miles on the county’s trails, but in that contest there was not a start and finish date.
Watch out
» Parks staff members are telling residents that if they walk on trails this weekend to stick to the hard surface trails, such as The Capital Crescent Trail. Some of the softer trails were drenched by this week’s storms and have not yet been checked.
