I’m tackling Garmin’s hardest virtual fitness challenge in 2026 — walking the length of the Appalachian Trail

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Try this long-term challenge to stay motivated to keep walking

Appalachian Trail sign on a trail in the woods
(Image credit: Shutterstock)

There are a lot of ways to motivate yourself to move more, and I find gamifying my activities through long-term challenges irresistible.

I particularly like a long-term distance challenge where all of your daily steps count towards completing a long journey virtually, via an app or one of the best sports watches.

In the past, I’ve completed a LEJOG (the length of the UK from Land’s End to John O’Groats) this way, and I got halfway to Mordor using a Garmin Connect IQ app before I swapped watches and lost all my progress heartbreakingly.

I still have ambitions to return to Middle Earth and start my journey to Mordor from scratch — fortunately, our UK editor-in-chief managed to complete this journey last year, so the One Ring did get destroyed and the Shire is safe — but my main challenge next year is to hike the Appalachian Trail.

Garmin’s longest distance challenge

Garmin Connect Challenges Tab on an iPhone

(Image credit: Future)

In the challenges section of the Garmin app (via the three dots in the corner of the home screen), you’ll see a load of different badges you can earn for varying physical feats.

Some are short-term, like a monthly steps challenge, while the expeditions section has a series of epic hikes and climbs to tackle.

The longest of these is the Appalachian Trail, which is around 2,175 miles, or 3,500km long, which Garmin estimates will require around 4.9million steps to complete. That’s around 13,500 steps a day to complete it in a year.

A walk in the woods

Garmin Connect Appalachian Trail badge

(Image credit: Future)

I first read Bill Bryson’s A Walk In The Woods book as a teenager and have reread it several times since. It recounts the author's attempts to complete the route, and as someone who lived in the British countryside, the Appalachian Trail sounded impossibly long and exciting — there are very few, if any, bears in East Sussex, or indeed mountains – and you’d have to walk the length of Britain almost three times to hit 2,200 miles.

Bryson made it around 800 miles into the trail before calling it a day, so my first goal will be ticking off that number. I’m a keen runner, so I will hopefully be able to stick to my regular training to hit the distances required, especially when marathon training kicks in.

I also gave myself the last week of December as a head start, though I didn’t log a huge amount of activity over the Christmas period.

If you complete the hike from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine, Garmin awards you the Appalachian Trail badge, which must be one of the hardest Garmin badges to earn, just behind the Mythical Sleep badge awarded when you record a sleep score of 100. With two young kids in the house, that’s one I’m unlikely to achieve in 2026.

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Nick Harris-Fry
Nick Harris-Fry
Senior Writer

Nick Harris-Fry is an experienced health and fitness journalist, writing professionally since 2012. He spent nine years working on the Coach magazine and website before moving to the fitness team at Tom’s Guide in 2024. Nick is a keen runner and also the founder of YouTube channel The Run Testers, which specialises in reviewing running shoes, watches, headphones and other gear.


Nick ran his first marathon in 2016 and became obsessed with the sport. He now has PBs of 2hr 25min for the marathon and 15min 30sec for 5K. Nick is also a qualified Run Leader in the UK.


Nick is an established expert in the fitness area and along with writing for many publications, including Live Science, Expert Reviews, Wareable, Coach and Get Sweat Go, he has been quoted on The Guardian and The Independent.

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