Five A Day February is a Sport Walk Personal Challenge that’s perfect for building endurance and embedding routine.
As the name suggests, the challenge is to walk 5km (about 3 miles) every day throughout February, starting on February 1st and ending with the last walk on February 28th. If you want to run or run/walk you can, the only condition is that you complete the distance each day on foot.
When it’s a leap year, those completing the challenge will become ’29ers’ – a unique accolade only achievable on those years where there are 29 days in February.
“The Five A Day February challenge helps with so much more than just physical fitness, it’s a powerful mental reset”
Jack Durnford, Canada
The daily activity for the challenge is really simple and most people should be able to complete each walk in an hour or less. There are no prizes or medals, this is a personal challenge, carried out by you, for you. It’s all about using the test for your own objectives and benefit.
While Five A Day February is superb for embedding the discipline of going out walking to get fit or improve your physical and mental wellbeing, it’s also a great opportunity for fundraising, which is why in 2026, we’re dedicating Five A Day February to our mental health charity partner Sport In Mind.
Making a fundraising commitment is not compulsory in order to take part but we do urge everyone to support this fantastic charity if they can, either through sponsorship from friends or family or by making a small donation themselves.
There’s a main Five A Day February fundraising page on Just Giving, where you can set up your own connected fundraising page or just make a donation.
How it works
Five A Day February, as a Personal Challenge, is simply about going out every day and walking or running 5km for your own benefit but you’ll want to have a personal record of achievement, which is where Strava comes in.
If you’re already a Strava user, you can simply track each walk you do through February to give you your personal record of achievement. If you’re not yet a Strava user, you can sign up for a free account that gives you full functionality to track your walks, either by paring a sports watch or by using the app on your phone and you’re ready to go!
The Five A Day February HQ is our Strava Club, which is free and easy to sign up to (fundraising for Sport In Mind is separate via Just Giving). So whether you’re an existing Strava user or new to the platform, once you’re on there just search for and join the Sport Walk Strava Club and then share your walks with the Strava club each day, so we can all give you kudos and encouragement to keep you motivated. Make sure you title them ‘Five A Day February – Day 1, Five A Day February – Day 2’ etc, so it’s clear.
You can split the daily distance into two or more walks a day if you wish or need to because of time constraints. Your daily total is what matters not how you achieve that overall 5km distance.
If you prefer, you can go longer, just like Jack from Canada who decided to walk 20km every day (read his story here), although we wouldn’t recommend that unless you’re an experienced Sport Walker! As long as you walk a minimum of 5km, you can decide how far you want to go.
You can also choose how fast you go, there are no time targets, this is all about measuring your effort so that you can get through the whole month. So, for this challenge, the speed you go is not a critical part of the challenge, although you should be seeking to go at a strong pace, so you’re walking fast but you need to be able to sustain that pace every day for the whole month.
For instance, if your normal Sport Walking pace is, say, 9 minutes per kilometre and you normally walk at that pace three times a week, you’d want to be slowing a little because of the additional effort you’ll be making and because you won’t have any rest days. So, you might start out the challenge at 10 or 11 minutes per kilometre instead and see how you get on.
You shouldn’t just walk at a slow pace so it’s easy though. Anyone can walk 5km everyday at a leisurely pace! You should always be seeking to walk as fast as you can, so that you get the most out of the challenge but just moderate your normal pace a little, to play safe.
Get all the information you need from our ‘Taking Part’ page.
What does Five A Day February give you?
Because you’re walking every day, the challenge is fantastic for building endurance and resilience in your legs. It’s not so much about an aerobic workout because you do need to manage your effort to sustain daily walks at a good pace through the whole month, so it’s more about the benefits you get for your muscles and your endurance. You will benefit aerobically, it’s just that this isn’t the primary benefit.
Five A Day February is also extremely valuable as a way to embed a routine in your day to day life. Because it’s a challenge, you’ll adapt to accommodate all the walks during February but then, once it’s finished, it’ll be much easier to continue with your routine, even if you switch out to a different schedule.
Because, in general, it’s better to go training every other day rather than every day, to give your body better recovery time, once Five A Day February is finished, you can drop back down to something like a four day schedule but the overall routine you’ve got yourself into during February will still be there.
It’s a great tool for learning how to manage your pace as well, which is a necessity within Sport Walking challenges or just big adventurous Sport Walks. Being able to walk to a set pace, to manage your effort, is a skill and because you need to be able to walk at a pace that will enable you to go through the whole month without suffering or having to quit through over exertion, you’ll learn a lot about your own pace potential and how to walk efficiently in order to sustain it.
The other thing the challenge helps with is self belief and mental resilience. After a couple of weeks, sticking to the plan to walk 5km every day will become more of a test but because the challenge itself is really straightforward and simple, you’re able to get through these doubts with much less stress than if the challenge were itself complicated, was physically more demanding or required greater time commitment.
And if you need more inspiration around this aspect, just remember Jack’s words about self discipline and how this challenge helped him
Share and get support
Five A Day February is fed through our Strava Club but your session records on Strava are just your personal record that you have completed the challenge. To get the most our of Five A Day February, it’s good to tap into the social support you can get, initially by sharing your workouts each day with our Strava Club, so club members see what you’re achieving and can give you kudos.
In addition to this, it’s great to share your efforts with us on Facebook in the Sport Walk Community group or by mentioning us in your personal Facebook or Instagram posts. This gives us and other supporters of Sport Walk on these platforms a chance to congratulate you and to give you encouragement to keep going.
When you post about your challenge, make sure to call it ‘Five A Day February’ and use the hashtag #FiveADayFebruary so that it’s easy to find and connect to the challenge. You could make your posts into a little daily blog or diary of your challenge and don’t forget to note the day (day 1, day 2 etc), so it’s clear to people what stage of the challenge you’re at.
Of course, it’s also really valuable for you to share what you’re doing in order to get support from friends and family for your fundraising efforts, so make the most of the opportunity to share your Five A Day February walks and feel the love from the community!
An easy challenge ?
Just because you only walk 5km, don’t think this is a walk in the park (unless that’s where you walk)! Completing 28 5km walks at a strong pace without a day off is a tougher test that many might think. The key is to go into it respecting the overall distance and with a tactical mindset.
It doesn’t matter how well you perform on any individual day, this is all about being able to sustain a walk everyday without interruption for a whole month.
If you approach Five A Day February as a challenge that’s going to be difficult the further into it you go, then you’ll be prepared and will take the right approach to be in a comfortable position to complete it. If you go in guns blazing on day one and post fast times throughout, you may not reach the end.
In this respect, Five A Day February is exactly like a longer Sport Walking challenge or an ultramarathon. When you start, you need to make sure that you’re holding something back for later because the further you go, the harder it gets.
But don’t fear this test. Each day, you only need to walk 5km which is around an hour of your time or less and then you have the rest of the day for your body to recover and to be ready to go again.
So the odds are stacked in your favour and as long as you keep your effort under control, you’re sure to succeed!