Rules:

Welcome to Your Quest!

Our runs offer something more for the solo runner through an experience aimed at fostering motivation - a quest.  The Day Quest offers three kinds of quests - Time Quests, Exploratory Quest, and Treasure Quests.  Although, we believe all quests are Time Quests.

Time Quests - typically held on ideal courses to run a PR, to fly down smooth trails, or to push one's self.  We require participants to upload their GPS activities to get accurate results.

Exploratory Quests - many runners find that they run the same trails regularly.  This can be meditative, but in talking with many race participants during our research for this venture, we've heard that people often register for races to explore somewhere new.  We love this and want to find ideal courses that are fairly easy to follow and offer something new.

Treasure Quests - this is largely experimental, but we think treasure hunting and adventure races are awesome.  For any treasure quest, each runner will be given a clue, or series of clues, after they finish.  The first person to solve these clues will receive the "treasure", which could be anything from actual gold to a prize to something else (don't expect the world, but something unique).

Joining the Run: Guidelines and Rules

• Primary Rule: Stay Motivated!

• Start a new activity for your quest - Just as if you were on the start line of a race, we recommend that you start your run activity near the start line and stop it near the finish line.  We believe we've figured out ways to extract your course time from your overall activity, but it's not always perfect and crossing the start/finish lines can wreck havoc with understanding your intentions.  You start and stop your watch for other races, so do it here.
• Run - Don't bike, or roller skate, or drive, or do anything but run - just don't.  We allow crab walks, but only ones uploaded online with the hashtag - #TheDayQuest.
• Upload your results on time - Your results track the time of your run.  When you upload, we will check to make your the activity took place during the quest period, that the time when you uploaded took place during the quest period, and that the activity matches the course.
• Register before you upload - If you try to run a quest and upload to Garmin without first registering for the quest, we will ignore your activity.
• We track elapsed time, not moving time.
• Don't upload activities from where you live or work - If you upload an activity longer than the course, we'll do our best to deal with it, but we'll show your full activity.  We enjoy privacy as much as the next person, so don't share more than you're comfortable with.  If you sync with Garmin, we will look at your activities in the following way - 1) we will store any activities that take place during the time frame of a quest you're registered for.  These will not be public at all.  We will then analyze any activities within the quest period to determine if they match the course.  If they do, we will then do further analysis to determine your time on the course, and add your activity as a result for the quest.  You can delete any of your quests.  The only public details will be your results for the quest.

Winning/Finishing: Here's What You Need to Know

• Results: Results will become available as they are received.  Results can only be uploaded between the start and end times for the quest.  Results may vary.  We want to try new things so we're going to start with a performance score.  This utilizes a unique algorithm that combines aspects of age grading to allow men and women of all ages to compete against each other.  You'll still be able to sort by time, but we think the performance score is pretty cool.
  
• Eligibility to Win:
  • You must submit a run result. Acceptable submissions include uploads from Garmin or valid GPX files.  We don't think a manual result should be eligible but we could easily change this depending on what people think.
    
  • Alongside your submission, provide access to a public running account, like Strava. This will not be made public, but our admins may use it to validate your run. For instance, if you post a result that doesn't align with your usual performance metrics, we might ask for further proof.
  • Treasure quests will have general clues and location clues.  Location clues will be related to the real world, and require that you be where the answer is found.

Additional Points to Keep in Mind:

• Our system might not be foolproof. We trust our participants not to exploit any loopholes. However, if you emerge as a winner, we may ask to review other runs for verification purposes.
• It's essential to approach this with a sporting spirit. While we aim for accuracy, errors may occur given the unpredictability of GPS and other factors. For those familiar with Strava segments, we all know that mishaps can happen (like forgetting to switch the tracker mode). Let's maintain an understanding and calm demeanor throughout.

Remember, this is all in good fun. Enjoy the quest!