Happy Streakiversary to me! Four years ago today I started my current running streak. I had just read an article about this guy who had run every day for something ridiculous like 50 years and was intrigued by the idea. I’m a big believer in doing a little bit of exercise each day and the 1 mile minimum requirement appealed to me. Even though I had only been running regularly for 3 months, felt this was well within my grasp. I can’t remember if I had any goals in mind when I started (maybe a year), however I’ve already exceeded whatever I thought I was capable of at the time.
The biggest concern then was whether running every day would lead to injuries. And this is perhaps the biggest argument against running streaks. But lets be honest. The requirement is only a mile. It’s not 5 miles and it’s not a mile under 10, 11, or even 15 minutes. You just have to run a mile and if you’ve been running for any length of time, then this is a very low bar to cross. I’ve even found that running a very slow 1-2 miles when I’m really tight after a long race is a great way to loosen my muscles up and help with my recovery. That said – you should never run if you are truly injured. I’m lucky that up until now, I haven’t had to worry about stopping my running streak because I was injured. Hopefully, I never reach that point.
I don’t mention my running streak much (hardly ever?) partially because you’d get bored pretty quickly by hearing “welcome to day #1256 of my running streak” and partially because most of the time I just don’t think about it. It’s a line in my spreadsheet next to the date, however I’ll go months between even glancing at it. If you asked me how many days my streak has lasted, I probably couldn’t tell you within a couple hundred unless I did the math first (4 years times 365 less 2 months . . .). Turns out 4 years and a day works out to 1,462 days, which means I’m well on my way to 10k straight days. So if the 100×100 milers thing doesn’t work out, I always have another 10k goal for me to chase.
What’s the longest you’ve ever done one thing?
Happy streakaversy! Sorry I missed it. I will expect Kate to have a party next year. We can all run a mile with you!