During the holidays I decided to do a holiday running streak.
What was the plan?
“The run streak is designed to keep you running through the holiday season, and to bridge the gap between fall races and training for the spring. It can be difficult this time of the year to keep your running on track—but it’s much easier if you have a goal and a plan.
The goal is simple: Run at least one mile per day, every day, starting on Thanksgiving Day (Thursday, November 26) and ending on New Year’s Day (Friday, January 1). That’s 37 consecutive days of running.”
Read more about it here: I might try streaking
In the end I didn’t run every day. I missed 6 of the 37 days all told. On those days I’d ridden my bike more than 50 km or I was sick, I didn’t ride. I figured missing those days was a reasonable thing. But missing one day here and there didn’t ruin my enthusiasm for the streak.
Why bother which small amounts of running? See Running small amounts has big benefits.
What happened?
- What I liked best was the change in how I felt about running. No more hemming and hawing about whether I would today or tomorrow, or whether it was too cold or too wet to go running. Instead I just ran. It was a short distance so I just did it.
- I discovered you build up an impressive amount of laundry running everyday! Yes, it’s not far but you still get sweaty and want to wash the clothes before you run in them again.
- It was helpful having a stash of running clothes, a second pair of running shoes, and a Toronto running companion. No excuses when visiting the big city!
- One mile isn’t as short as you might think. Well, obviously. It’s not a sprint. It’s not the 400 m. In fact, it’s a little more than four times that. It’s a reasonable distance and you need to pace yourself. But I didn’t take walking breaks. It’s not that long.
- I promised myself I’d quit if I hurt myself and I’m happy to say that I didn’t. Lots of consecutive days of running and zero injuries. Yay!
- I didn’t use my Garmin watch all the time. It seemed too much fuss and bother to keep everything charged and ready to go. Ditto for music. (I’m going to blog about speed and music later. Turns out I can either enjoy the music or run faster. Who knew?)
- Oh, and I did get faster during the streak. I loved logging some of the runs on the Garmin and seeing the “you’ve run x number of runs on this route” accompanied by my favourite phrase “trending faster.” I’m nowhere near as fast as Susan (go Susan!) with her speedy 6 min/kms but I’m on my way there. I did manage my faster runs at under 7 min/km pace. I got down to 6:48 on my fastest run.
What next? I’m going to go back to running three times a week, I think. And back to the old pattern, two short runs on weekdays and a longer run on the weekends. I’m hoping the streak has worn down my resistance to getting out the door though. Pride Run and Kincardine Duathlon (registered!) here I come…
