Mobile nodes in MANETs have the nature of unrestricted mobility so that they will join and leave the network frequently. Therefore, it important consideration to determine the optimal distance progress between relaying nodes along the route in order to maintain the established route for an arbitrary length of time (i.e., route duration). In this paper, we derived the link maintenance probability by considering the initial distance between two relaying nodes and node mobility. Based on the link maintenance probability, we further analyzed the route stability by considering the impact of distance progress between relaying nodes along the route.