General Info/Contact

• Requirements- You can participate in the game as a team member or individual.  To play, you need to keep your running log updated so that your workouts can count towards your yearly goal (and earn points for your team, if you're playing on a team). Running miles count; straight walking miles do not. Runners in the team game need to respond to any private messages on Running Ahead from their team captains or the admins. You are not required to communicate outside of RA for this game. 

• Injured Reserve/Leave of Absence- If you're on a team and know that you're going to have 0 miles for any given week, let your team captain know. After you have a '0' in the previous week's results, they can let the admins know to place you on "injured reserve/leave of absence".  Admins will only take IR requests from team captains, but we need to see the request from the runner. Any IR change requests made after the new week starts until results post will not be made until after results post Tuesday night. While on Injured Reserve, your miles will not count for or against your team in the weekly competition.  You will also not be dropped from your team due to inactivity.  Let your captain know when you're ready to leave the Injured Reserve list as well.

• Admin contact info- The game admins are stealth.rnr and CanadianMeg.  If you have a question or need clarification, you can send them a PM or post in the 2020 usergroup. Send PM’s to both of us because we get vacations too. The first admin to see it will respond. 

• Deadline- The competition week runs from Monday to Sunday, your local time.  In order to be counted, workouts for the previous week need to be logged by Tuesday at 10 PM Eastern Time.  Any changes made to your log after that time will not count towards your goal or for points for your team.

• Modifying goals- You are allowed to change your yearly goal ONE TIME before June 30th.  There will be a thread for goal changes in the usergroup, or you can let your captains or an admin know via PM.  In exceptional circumstances (severe injury, etc), we may allow one additional change after the deadline at the discretion of the admins.  Also, we reserve the right to modify goals if it appears that a user has set or changed to an artificially low goal (sandbagging).  This would only be done in extreme cases.   

Be smart in setting your goals. No one can coast through the first half of the year and jack up their goal later if they are starting a training cycle.  Late in the year, if you hit your goal early, you will not go green and don't count as someone who has hit their individual goal which can affect how your team does in that part of the head to head competition.

Team Membership

• Captains- Each team selects two captains who keep up-to-date on game info and communicate news and updates to the team. Admins will communicate with captains if they have any questions or if there are any changes needed. See Quick Guide to Being a Captain.* insert link

• Team info- The 2021 game tab has a "My Team" tab that lets you see who is on your team as well as their goal and current miles for the week.  The "Distance" column turns green for each member who has hit their distance goal for that week.  Each runner's team goal is their yearly goal divided by 52.142857. That number does not change unless the runner makes a goal change. The "previous" button provides more info on how the team and individual members did during those weeks. NEW in 2020: there is no personal pace bunny in the game; to go green, you must hit Annual Goal/52.142857.

• Communication- Each team will create a system for team communication via Running Ahead.  That could be via RA usergroup or a thread in the main 2020 forum.  Teams may also choose to set up groups outside of RA, but no team member is required to go outside of RA in order to communicate with their team.  Team members are strongly encouraged to participate in team discussions.  Many runners find the extra encouragement from their teammates to be motivating and fun!

• Leaving the team- Joining the game is a year-long commitment, and teams work best when a core group of members stays together for the entire year.  Runners are strongly discouraged from leaving the team once the year has started.  Injured players can stay on the team for communication and support.  Injured reserve players will not count for or against your team on the weekly matchups.

• Dropping from team for non-posting- Any player who does not update his or her log for 3 consecutive weeks without notifying their team captain can be removed from the team at the captain's request. Removal requests made between Sunday night and Tuesday’s results will be completed once results have been posted. 

• Voting off a team member- If a team member has 3 or more non-consecutive weeks of 0 miles without notifying the captain, the captain may choose to initiate a vote to remove that member from the team.  To initiate a vote, the captain would let the admins know. Admins will conduct the vote via Private Message. The admins do not initiate a vote without attempts having already been made by the team captains to contact the absent runner. The member will be removed once a majority of the team has voted "yes" to remove, or after a reasonable period of time if the majority of team members have voted "yes." The vote is confidential; even your team captain is not privy to how people voted, even if your team captain is an admin. (This is why admins will never be on the same team.)

Important Note Regarding Removed Players: If a runner is removed from their team for 3 weeks consecutive non-posting or voted off by their team, they will not be permitted to join the game the following year. Essentially, they are banned for one year. If a runner requests to have themselves removed from a team or changed to the individual game, they will have the option to join either the team or individual game the following year. The admins will keep a list with distinctions.