How to Win Free Chipotle With the Latest Strava Challenge

Strava and Chipotle have launched a marketing partnership that involves three different ways to potentially win free food. Two of those ways involve getting outside and running, walking, or using your wheelchair (sorry, no bikes) on Chipotle-branded Strava segments. Here’s what’s involved, and which parts of the challenge give you the best chance at free food. 

The easiest way to get a free meal: Sign up for texts

The first thing you should do, if you want to make the most of this promotion, is to sign up for the “No Quitters Day” text list—sorry, motivational text message community. Go here to sign up, anytime through Jan. 9. 

On Jan. 10, you’ll get a text with instructions to claim one of 50,000 free “lifestyle bowls.” A lifestyle bowl is, basically, a burrito bowl. They come in varieties like the Plant Powered Bowl (with sofritas) and the High Protein Bowl (with double chicken).

(Why Jan. 10? Strava has previously identified the second Friday in January as the day people tend to give up on their resolutions; thus, “Quitter’s Day.”) 

The way to get the most free food: Live in one of these 25 cities, and run a lot

Strava is setting up “segments” for the competition in 25 specific cities. A segment is a stretch of road that has an associated leaderboard in the Strava app. If you track an activity (with your phone or a smartwatch), and that activity includes a named segment, you’ll get credit for running that segment. If you run in a popular park, you’ve probably run tons of segments without realizing it. 

Anyway, to compete in this challenge, you’ll want to find one of the official challenge segments, and run it as often as you can. Whoever runs that segment the most times in January of this year will earn “Local Legend” status (this is also a standard feature of segments in Strava), and at the end of the month, the Local Legend will be awarded Chipotle Rewards credits that are good for one entrée per week for a year. An entrée can be a burrito, bowl, order of three tacos, quesadilla, or salad. It does not include kids’ meals, “3-point meals,” or single tacos. 

The full rules for the city challenge are here, including links to the segments so you can see where they are. The segments tend to be short, around 0.1 or 0.2 miles. They are in 25 different cities, 23 of them in the U.S. and one each in Paris and London. In the U.S., Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, and Washington, D.C. are among the lucky cities.

One more way to win: Live in (or visit) the city that gets the most miles

For this last way to win food, you don’t have to do anything—but the city that gets the most miles on its Chipotle segment will see its local Chipotle locations run a buy-one-get-one-free offer at some unspecified future date. You don’t need to be a runner or have a Strava account; just keep an eye out for the promotion.