AdventRunning: streak in December and earn that pudding

What Santa really wants: run (or cycle, or pull a sleigh) for half an hour every day in December. Photograph: yanzhonghua/Xinhua Press/Corbis

Picture this: it's the first of January, you've got a stinking hangover from last night's festivities and your jeans have gone from skinny to bursting-at-the-seams. You probably didn't need that third helping of turkey on Christmas Day, but what the hell, nothing exceeds like excess. Don't panic, you think. You'll simply dust off the trainers and start running again. Tomorrow. Definitely tomorrow. You're far too fragile today.

Sound familiar?

A few years ago this was Claudia and I. We loved running. Heck, we're even quite good at it, but there's no escaping the fact that December can be a difficult month to find time to exercise. Days get shorter and darker, our lives get busier and the weather can be plain awful. We would get to January, look at our training diaries and realise we had barely run in the previous month. Not the best preparation for a spring season of half and full marathons.

In an effort to "beat the bulge" and maintain some sort of fitness, we came up with the concept of AdventRunning. It had one simple rule. Run for 30 minutes a day, every day, between 1 and 25 December. It didn't matter how far or how fast. The idea was simply to find time in our hectic lives to do some exercise. And have fun doing so in the process.

In 2014, thanks in no small part to an article published in the Guardian, AdventRunning blew up. We went from a small collection of 50 friends to a group of 1,500. Overnight, our Facebook group became full of people posting photos of 30-minute runs against a backdrop of snow-capped mountain peaks, familiar grey cities and, nauseatingly for those in the UK, sun-drenched beaches in the southern hemisphere. At some point during the month, I recall a friend saying to me that AdventRunning had brought a welcome warm glow of positivity to his rather somber Facebook feed.

But better than all this, AdventRunning took on a life of its own and became a community. A runner would post on Facebook or Twitter that they were struggling to find the motivation to run, that they were too tired or too busy. The group would instantly rally behind him or her: this from people who had never met, in different parts of the world and who, in many cases, were new to running. Our hearts flowed over with pride.

As I sit here writing this article we're days away from this year's launch. Some things have changed but all the best bits of AdventRunning remain. While it was originally a run-based challenged, we have broadened the scope. We love running and it's hugely accessible – you can do it anywhere and all you really need is a pair of sneakers – but it can be hard on the body and it's not for everyone. So for 2015, we simply want people to be active. Running, cycling, spin classes, yoga or swimming. Mix them up if you want. At the end of the day, being active is more important than the activity.

The strong sense of community is also still there; in fact, its bigger and better than before. The challenge is primarily supported on social media, but there is also a range of running events for those based in London. Details can be found on Facebook and our website, but we're excited to be partnering with community-minded brands such as Pact Coffee, Like the Wind Magazine, The North Face and the independent running retailer The Running Works. As ever, events will be free, social and suitable for all paces and availabilities.

To encourage people to stick with it for the duration of the challenge, we will continue to award a daily spot prize for the best photo, video or blog of each day's activity. The icing on the Christmas cake is the fact that, on Christmas Day, we will be giving away a "money can't buy" place at the Virgin Money London Marathon (plus training kit) courtesy of long time supporter Adidas.

So how do you get involved? Well, that's easy. We're on all the usual social media channels. We're also on Strava, if that's your thing. At the end of the day, how often you exercise and how you record it is up to you. A scrap of paper on the fridge works for us. What is more important is challenging yourself to be more active next month. Why not join us and begin 2016 on the front foot for a change?

Source: AdventRunning: streak in December and earn that pudding