Streak!

I did not run on April 2, 2020. But I have run at least a mile – usually much more - every day since. I know other runners with multi-year streaks, but this one-year thing has been a big deal for me. Not that I would recommend such a thing. In fact, I’d rank it up there with some of the dumbest things I’ve done, running or otherwise. Here are some further thoughts.

The reason such a streak is new to me is that I’ve always thought that taking one or two days off per week is a good thing to do. Now, I think so even more.

This year-long streak coincides nicely with the worst 12 months of the pandemic. That’s no accident. For one thing, although I like to run when I travel, I sometimes miss a day here and there, especially when I have a long flight across time zones or some other major time constraint. But since the only recent travel has been via road trips, I haven’t had this as an excuse. I should also add that owning a treadmill has helped, mostly because the winter was so bad, and we couldn’t get away to someplace warmer. 

3,719 miles. That’s slightly more than the number of miles covered from January through December of 2020. It averages out to 10.18 per day, and it does not include walking miles. This is not to say that the running was fast, however. It was the slowest of my life. My average pace for these miles was just over 11 minutes per mile.

Even though the pace has been slow, some of the miles were actually okay. They include the GVRAT miles (May through August), and a pretty good marathon last October. Because of this, had someone asked back then how the streak was going, I would have provided a positive response. 

Recent weeks, however, have not been good at all. My Achilles Tendinitis pain suddenly became much worse after a track session about a month ago, and the running has been awful since. And even though my mileage was steady (at about 70 per week) prior to that, much of the running was just shuffling or being a treadmill wimp.

Bottom line: I need a day off. Maybe even more than one. It will come sooner rather than later. At that point, I’ll be a little less dumb.

My weekly mileage (notice the downward trend)