FAQ

General FAQ


The challenge begins on January 1st and ends on November 30th. It is divided into three quarters, plus two months.

There are three types of challenges: Elevation, Distance, and Duration. These are further divided into multiple levels of series to accommodate the abilities of participants. All types will have quarterly and annual goals commitment.

Participants can opt-in to a maximum of two challenges, but they must be of different types (e.g. Elevation and Distance). Yes, you will need to meet the goal requirements for all challenges separately to avoid being penalized. 

Carryover is not allowed. Doing extra will help you achieve your end-of-year goals. Every quarter is a reset to reach your minimum quarterly goal until you reach your end-of-year goals.

This is to ensure that participants reach at least the minimum goals to avoid penalties (consistency). Participants need to do more than their quarterly goals to reach their end-of-year goals. It is up to them to plan their calendar and fill the required gaps.

Please let us know. You can exit without penalties, but you will also have to forego any wins you may have accumulated in previous quarters and that will be distributed to other participants in good standing.

This year, due to high demand, enrollment will be closed by December 15. Participants only enroll once for this annual challenge.

Yes, you can switch your challenge type during the cooling-off period, which ends on January 30th. After that, you will be locked in the challenge you have chosen.

You need a smart device or watch (such as a Garmin), a Strava account, and some love! You will need to authorize Strava for the Saval web app to pull your Strava activity data for Saval to track your progress. Click here for detailed guidelines.

We will send out a Saval Challenge invite for the opt-in challenge. You will need to choose a type of membership (Active participant / Patron) and then select your challenge type(s) and complete the enrollment process to be part of the challenge.

You can use the Saval web app to track your progress. Additionally, an offline database of individual scores will be maintained on Google Sheets and updated every quarter, which will be shared with all participants.

Sometimes, this may happen. If someone points it out, please respectfully answer/justify or take corrective action for that particular event. This is an honor event and we are all here for long-term friendship, so please use trackers and avoid manual entries. If you need to add an event manually, please inform everyone in the group. 

This is counted as a duplicate. Once your activity is completed and synced, please delete one of the activities to avoid duplicates.

NO - You need to meet the goal requirements for each of the challenges you are participating in.

Efforts will be made to collect money from those who fail to meet their goals. The collected funds minus any expenses will be donated to charitable non-profits, nominated by the top 6 challenge leaderboard finishers, and chosen by a poll among the participants.

The celebration party for participants and their families will tentatively be held during the first weekend of December, the exact date will be announced later.

No, e-bikes/scooters are not allowed in this challenge.

No, once enrolled, you cannot change to a higher/lower challenge.

Yes, there is no limit for for number of participants in each tier. But we will close the enrollment on Dec 30 to ease our volunteer work. 

Strava's privacy controls allow you to manage who can see your activities, profile information, and other data on the platform. This helps you stay safe and comfortable while sharing your fitness achievements. click here for detailed information regarding privacy at Strava.

The payment settlement deadline is December 5th, with details to be provided at a later date. 

Technical FAQ


Saval tracks your progress towards quarterly and yearly goals using data from your Strava activities. So, if you haven't already, creating a Strava account and recording your workouts is key! Strava sends data about your exercise back to Saval, who then computes and presents your data.

Strava offers a comprehensive platform for recording a wide range of activities, from running and cycling, swimming, and hiking to workouts. This ensures consistency and accuracy in tracking your progress across different types of workouts. Plus, Strava seamlessly integrates with many fitness trackers and wearables, making it easy for Saval to sync and compute the data. Please note that Saval is still under development.

No worries! Creating a Strava account is free and takes just a few minutes. Once you're set-up, start recording your workouts, and Saval will automatically start tracking your progress toward your goals. Remember, We pull the data backdated to Jan 1, 2024, and if you have recorded your data from Jan 1 and forgot to sync, we will still pull the data to compute against your goals.


No, you do not need to purchase a Strava subscription for Saval to collect information about your activities.  A basic free membership is sufficient for data collection



While we are collecting all data regarding your activities and your profile information from Strava, we will only be using the distance, elevation, time, watts, kilojoules, and activity type information to calculate your progress against the challenges.  


Yes, but only if you permit them. During the Saval authorization process, you'll be asked to choose which data you want to share. You can select:


Please contact your chapter leads to initiate the reauthorization process for you.



Saval uses 3rd party tools Google/Facebook for secure login to Saval’s dashboard. It is also a way for Saval to link the email you provided during the registration and your Strava account to either a Google or Facebook account.  Once the link has been made, you would be able to access your dashboard at https://app.saval.org/dashboard.html by logging in using the same Google or Facebook account.



Saval does not use your Strava account email.



It is OK if you used non Gmail or Facebook emails (example yahoo or hotmail) at registration.  You will be clicking the link sent to your email you used at registration.  By clicking that link and logging in using your Google or Facebook account you will be able to complete the account linking and authorize Strava.



Although you could use the same link, you do not need to.  You could use https://app.saval.org/dashboard.html to access the dashboard once you successfully completed the account linking and authorization with Strava.