Many of my escapades and achievements down the years have been down to chance or happy accidents rather than my superior planning and merit. The most common occurrence of such events have been lengthy running streaks. I’m not talking about running down the street wearing nothing but a smile. No, I mean running every day. I generally do Run Every Day January anyway each year, but I have, on occasion, ran every day for well over fifty days, even close to 100 a couple of times perhaps. As disclosed, I don’t just start on day one and announce to myself I’m going to keep going for fifty days. I usually notice that it is now the middle of March and I’ve been going for over sixty days, so, well, I may as well just carry on.
Since 2021, I have done this a few times. In 2022 my running streak was broken, rightly so, by the birth of my son. Though really, if I’d had my trainers with me I could have got a run in as he was born in the early hours of a Saturday morning within spitting distance of a parkrun. It was so close by, they all ran past the window. In truth, I prioritised things sensibly, and besides, I didn’t want to miss a second of him at all. It turns out, I’ve only NOT been for a run for eleven days in almost two years.
Running has become a part of my daily routine now that I have been doing it for so long and I generally feel a bit lost if I go a couple of days without getting out. The end of January 2023 was when I finished work for six months to be a stay-at-home dad and do the second half of the parental leave. I had completed RED January, and having my life turned upside down by this little human made me wonder if the parts of my life that ensure my well-being would suffer, so I strove to make sure they continued to happen. I would just get up at 5 am like I did every day for work anyway and go for a run as usual, come home, get the boy up and start our day. It worked pretty well. This said parental leave serves to explain the nosedive in blog activity.
Anyway, the weeks rolled by in a blur, prioritising my baby son and our day-to-day challenges. By April, I had the same realisation that I had ran every day. And not just every day since 1st January, but 20th December in fact. “Why don’t I just carry on and do a year?”, asked I of myself. Myself responded with a resounding “Yes”.
To cut the middle bit out, I’m still going. I’ve just reached my 400th day and I can see no reason to stop really. I haven’t had any injuries, and I can safely manage myself by mixing up short runs, long runs, really short runs and, well, any kind of run.
To me, it’s just something that I do. There have been days where I’ve been unwell so have done a bare minimum run, just to keep it going. There have been days where I’ve nearly forgotten to go because I didn’t go in the morning. There have been days where I haven’t wanted to go but did anyway.
What have I learned from all of it? The best lesson I’ve learned is about making something routine so it becomes second nature like eating and sleeping. If I can apply this to something else, imagine what other good habits I can get into my life. I’ve also learned how strong and resilient my body is. The most useful tool that I can use for the coming year has been about generally looking after myself. I had a couple of health anomalies last year and it became apparent I need to be more sensible with looking after my body, and making sure I get plenty of rest. I’ll carry that on and keep adding to it with things like proper stretching, flexibility routines and a dabble here and there on the sado-massochistic knobbly foam roller (pleasure and pain are closely related). In the end, I’d like to be like I am now for a good while to come.
In a blog post in the future, I’ll bore all my readers with what 2024 has in store for me. It’s going to be a busy year by the looks of it and so far it’s looking heavily-stacked up in the running department, so to try to avoid it being all about that, I’ll try to mix it up a bit and get out for some of the more overlooked aspects of my outdoor life – the kind that have fallen by the wayside under the weight of a busy toddler-orientated life.
Only one thing left to do, and that is to wish you all a belated happy new year, and bestow upon you all the energy and willpower you might need to keep those dreams, targets and happy activities very much alive.
My Outdoor Living Room 