Medals, Miles, and Marketing
I keep seeing ads on social media for fitness challenges where you earn a medal for completing a goal. I assumed they were like a 5K. Sign up, do the distance, get the reward. Simple.
Since my doctor suggested focusing on my activity and weight this summer, I’m starting now to show initiative before our appointment.
That assumption didn’t last long.
After clicking through, I was immediately asked for my name and email, then shown a countdown timer and a steadily increasing “people reserving” counter. It felt like urgency was being manufactured in real time. A pattern I usually take as a warning sign.
Then came the medals. Lots of them. Most were 60 miles or more. I eventually spotted one about 30 miles to complete, but overall, it was overwhelming. Too many options, not enough clarity.
Next screen: $38
No clear explanation of whether that was monthly or one-time. That sent me digging. What I found is that it’s a one-time fee for the challenge and medal, with shipping.
That part actually made sense. It wasn’t clear whether shipping was included or would be charged later.
What also made sense, once I confirmed it, was that the “routes” are virtual. You walk anywhere, log your steps, and the app moves you along a mapped path. The virtual routes themselves didn’t do much for me, but being in a rural area, I was relieved I didn’t need to drive anywhere to participate.
I couldn’t find many similar services focused on flexible, step-based goals with physical rewards, so I came back and completed the purchase. I used PayPal to avoid surprises.
A “Momentum” Offer
Then came the upsell.
A countdown timer reappeared, offering a “one-time momentum offer.” I initially read it as a “Buy 2, Get 1 Free” deal that would bring my total to $79.98. The math seemed to check out, since the per-medal price in the bundle was lower than my initial $38 entry fee.
I was wrong. It wasn’t a total; it was an additional charge. I realized too late that I hadn’t replaced my initial order. I had added to it. What I thought was a bundle was actually a stack of purchases. The lack of clarity in the checkout flow was jarring.
The final breakdown:
- $31.99 (entry + medal)
- $79.98 (3 medals – $26.66/medal)
- $6.99 shipping
The Bank Agrees
Right after I hit confirm, my bank flagged the second charge as potential fraud.
I approved it, but that moment stuck with me. It makes sense, though; the app uses a classic dark pattern presenting an upsell as a final order summary rather than an add-on. When a transaction is designed to be confusing, it’s no wonder it triggers a fraud alert.
After purchase, I was invited to a private Facebook group with rules that felt… unusual. No sharing images of events, no discussing weight-loss journeys, and restrictions tied to intellectual property. It felt heavily moderated and, at times, more like a space for promoting additional challenges than open discussion.
Then I received codes for four challenges and instructions to download the app and create a new account, even though I had already provided my email during checkout.
Finding a Challenge
Inside the app, things got even more cluttered.
There are over 100 challenges, with no clear way to sort by distance. Some show mileage upfront, others hide it behind additional screens. A few exceed 1,000 miles.
There aren’t many shorter challenges like a 5K or 10K that people are more familiar with, and that feels like one of the weakest parts when trying to start with small, achievable goals. Eventually, I found one of the shorter options: Inca Trail – 26 miles.
One thing I noticed is that while there’s a map, a trail, and postcards, there isn’t much in the way of story or simple context behind the challenges. You can view the route through Street View, but it feels more like a visual overlay than a guided experience. The news feed shows other participants on the same path, though it’s mostly just distance updates; nothing conversational. It feels a bit like being alone in a crowd of bots. I haven’t yet reached the postcards, local highlights, or tree-planting milestones to see what insights they provide.
You can set your own timeframe. I chose two years out of curiosity. That works out to about 0.25 miles per week, low enough that I could realistically complete it without ever having to try. Just everyday movement would eventually get me there.
That’s when it clicked: this isn’t really about structured challenges. It’s less about completing a challenge and more about eventually accumulating distance over time.
Learning How To Walk
I took my dogs out for a short walk. My phone tracked the steps, but the app showed 0.00 miles.
After digging through the help docs, I learned that progress updates are sent only once per day, with no real-time feedback. That already felt like a miss. Then, a few minutes after midnight, I still didn’t see any change. It turns out I had to fully close and reopen the app before it finally showed the single mile that I earned. There were other warnings that smartwatches only work with 3rd-party connections.
There are also “achievements,” but they’re tied to completing multiple challenges. They’re not tied to achieving meaningful goals such as total distance or consistency. For example, level one requires five badges. I had four and wasn’t motivated to buy another just for a digital pin. It starts to feel like a “pay-to-win” system, where reaching level six requires 150 badges (roughly a $6,000 investment).
Dog Friendly
One interesting option I found was The Great Sniffari, a 10-day dog walking challenge with shorter distances (3, 6, 13, or 26 miles) and even a small medal for your dog.
That actually felt more like what I expected from the beginning: focused, time-bound, and achievable.
But even that had quirks. It didn’t start until May 1st, was limited to 10 days, and didn’t appear in the app when browsing challenges unless you had a code to unlock it. Once you complete the goal you selected, there is no option to continue on to the higher distance if you finish early. You’d need to start a separate challenge, and registration for some medals, such as the Great Sniffari, ends before the race begins.
Closing Thoughts
There’s something appealing here:
- You can walk anywhere
- You set your own pace (within 2 years)
- You get a tangible reward
That part works.
But there are also concerns:
- Heavy use of high-pressure sales tactics
- Confusing pricing during checkout
- An overwhelming number of challenges with poor filtering
- Delayed feedback in the app
- Incentives tied more to buying than completing
It starts to feel less like a challenge and more like placing an order. You pay upfront, and after enough time has passed (or enough steps have accumulated), the medal arrives. The outcome can feel somewhat inevitable rather than earned through a focused goal. Shorten the timeframe, and it becomes more of a behavioral nudge than a true challenge. When prior medals can be found on secondary marketplaces for less, the sense of challenge, exclusivity, and motivation starts to fade.
The longest challenge is Route 66 at 2,280 miles. Pacing that over the two-year maximum works out to about 22 miles per week—roughly 3 miles a day, or a 5K every day. For anyone truly looking for a challenge, Route 66 delivers. However, maintaining that pace consistently for two years may be difficult for many. It also raises a trade-off: committing to a long-term route could mean missing out on shorter, limited-time challenges unless you’re willing to pause or split your effort.
The cost of a medal is comparable to an actual 5K, where you’re typically paying for a bib, shirt, medal, timing chip, and event support. While the medals here are impressive, it does make you wonder how much of the cost goes beyond the platform and the medal itself.
The upfront cost of $38 felt like a reasonable way to get some skin in the game, but the additional $80 came quickly and felt like a much bigger bite than suggested. It left me uneasy about what other “deals” might be waiting down the line.
In the long run, I’m not sure how sustainable it is. Once you finish the shorter challenges, you’re left with longer ones that feel less like goals and more like background progress that requires discipline rather than excitement. At that point, the $40 price tag for a medal starts to feel like a plateau unless there’s a steady stream of shorter, more achievable challenges released throughout the year, each with an attractive medal to keep participants engaged.
For someone with a sedentary lifestyle, though, it can be a low barrier to entry to getting active, especially if you set your own meaningful goals and treat it as a tool rather than the objective. The main point is that it’s not a race.
There’s also no clear indication of what happens if you exceed your self-imposed timeframe.
For now, I’ll give it a fair shot, starting small and seeing if the motivation holds.
But I’m going in with my eyes open. At its best, it’s a clever way to gamify movement. At its worst, it risks turning motivation into a transaction.
