After spending much of the day at a cookout with old friends of ours and new friends of theirs and having a wonderful time, Holly and I arrived home at 6 PM while Rick and Tim headed to a baseball practice. Leaving Holly next door with my parents, I took the dog and did just a one-mile run, possessing neither the time nor the inclination to do anything more than that.
It's days like this -- along with many, many other kinds of days -- that seem to prompt the question of why I bother to maintain my running streak. Other than the fact that one mile is the minimum distance permissible by the United States Running Streak Association (USRSA) to count toward a streak, what do I possibly gain from running one little mile? Even at my slow pace, I'm done in 11 minutes, and that's not enough to have any kind of value from a fitness perspective. Nor is it enough to reach any kind of runner's mental state: no meditation, no mind-clearing, just out for ten minutes or so to get it over with. Because that's really the mentality on a day like this: Just get the run done.
When I was running daily with Tim, I didn't need to justify it to myself because it was our little experiment: I did it because that was the plan, for the two of us to run a mile together every day and see what it was like.
But now that it's just me, I have to acknowledge the quasi-absurdity of it. To my mind, the running I did earlier this weekend has intrinsic worth for a variety of reasons. Both Saturday and Sunday I ran more than 3 miles, was out more than 30 minutes. I ran through a neighborhood not my own, saw a variety of scenery, pushed my body to exert itself slightly beyond what is comfortable (not that 30 minutes of running should be such a push, but somehow it still is), and in various ways reached a different level of thinking while I ran. Admittedly, on Saturday that level of thinking could be characterized mostly by the phrase "I wish this run were over," but nonetheless, my mind went beyond the quotidian details of my day and onto a different plane. Yesterday was a better run: I felt good about what I was doing, good about the exertion and the fresh air and the effort.
With a one-mile run, none of that really happens. It's just about getting out there because I said I'd get out there, so it's fair to ask myself why I bother. The flippant answer I've been giving when people ask if I'll continue the streak now that Tim has stopped is that I've paid my USRSA dues for the year and might as well get my $20 worth by continuing the streak until I owe another yearly payment. But beyond that, I just get a certain satisfaction out of knowing that I said I'd do something and I'm doing it. I said that no matter what happened, I would make it a priority to get out for a run of at least a mile every day. And it's true that there's no particular honor in doing so; nor is there any great fitness benefit, which is why I still ride my stationary bike for 45 minutes every morning and fit in as much walking and outdoor biking as I can in addition to that. And, of course, it's why I try to run 30 minutes or more at least three or four times a week.
The single-mile run, on a day like today when I'm doing it only for the sake of maintaining the streak, doesn't do anything for me physically or meditatively. But it reminds me that I'm upholding a contract to myself, doing what I said I'd try to do. And for someone as generally poor at time management as I am, it's also a good exercise in manipulating time: reminding myself that I can always find those 11 minutes to fit in my mile, which is what I've often said might be the biggest advantage Tim gained during his two years of streak running: time management.
But even more than that, it's my daily benchmark. It's something I do within every 24-hour period, and therefore it's a little like writing "I was here" in wet cement. It reminds me that on this particular day, I celebrated the blessing of existence by taking ten minutes to do something that I take ten minutes or more for every single day. Does that make sense? Probably not. But it justifies in my mind why this is still a worthwhile thing to do.
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