The Marathon sock KAL!

In April it was the London Marathon, which is televised in the UK. Over the morning of the marathon I had various friends texting me about things that were happening during the coverage. As ever, it did briefly cross my mind that one day I could run a marathon, but I haven't run in a very long time (not more than chasing children level running anyway, and before that I was never a serious runner), so it's not something I would naturally do. So instead my mind turned to things that could be done that relate to the length of a marathon. As I was knitting a pair of socks at the time, I idly wondered how many pairs of socks would need to be knitted to knit a whole 26(.219) miles of sock yarn. The answer is quite a lot – 141 pairs of UK size 10 socks to be precise.*

I quickly realised that knitting a Marathon's-worth of socks was going to take rather a long time. But what about if I had help? Which gave me the idea for a new knitalong: the Sock Marathon KAL.

The KAL will be running from May 7th in my Ravelry group, and will continue until a full Marathon's-worth of socks have been knitted! There are a few rules, which I've listed below, but anyone is welcome to join in – the more the merrier! To join the KAL, head over to the chatter thread in my Ravelry group,** introduce yourself, and tell me what you're planning on knitting.

How long do you think the KAL will take? Do you think we'll be done by the 2019 London Marathon?

Happy knitting everyone!

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Aim

Knit a Marathon's worth of socks: 26.219 miles of sock yarn converted into socks.

Rules

• Any yarn weight, any pattern
• Must be cast-on on or after May 7th 2018
• The KAL will close once the full 26 miles of yarn have been knitted
• You must post a photo of your pair of socks to the KAL FO thread, including the exact number of metres of yarn you used (to the nearest metre)
• I'll keep a running total for the group
• To be eligible for a prize, you must be a member of the Ravelry group

Prizes

• One prize for the person who knits the most metres
• One prize drawn from the chatter thread
• One prize drawn from the FO thread

FO thread template

• Date cast on:
• Date cast off:
• Link to your Ravelry project page
• Number of metres of yarn used***

*26.219 miles = 42 195 m; each of my pairs of socks uses approximately 300 m of yarn (assuming sock weight yarn at 400 m per 100 g)

**You'll need to be a member of Ravelry to join in the KAL. Membership is free.

***You must use metres for this KAL – 1 yd = 0.91 m