The streak turns three: Three years of daily running

Yesterday I observed my three-year anniversary of daily running. I started to write that I celebrated it, but there was really neither cause for nor practice of celebration. It wasn’t anything to stop and trumpet; it was just a milestone that I was interested to see come and go.

Yesterday was also Day 1,100 of my daily streak, and at first I was surprised by the congruity of the rounded number and the three-year mark, but then I remembered that there is a small disjuncture in my counting. I actually started my daily mile on August 12th with my son Tim, but it took three days before Tim could do a nonstop mile. He first ran a mile on August 15th of 2007, and from then until August 15th of 2009 he ran a mile or more every day. When it came time to register ourselves with the United States Running Streak Association, I listed us both under his start date of August 15th, and when he dropped out, I stuck with that date. So those extra three days for me, plus the fact that 2008 was a Leap Year, accounts for the nice round number of 1,100 days matching up with three years.

Three years in, I still don’t see this as an accomplishment. Instead, I see it as a decision I’ve made. I’ve decided for the past three years to make running a mile or more among my highest priorities. Well, that’s not exactly accurate. My highest priorities remain more typical concerns like the safety and well-being of my family. Running every day simply isn’t that big a sacrifice; it doesn’t take a great deal of work to make this happen, and I’ve decided that taking the small measures required to ensure that it does happen is worthwhile to me. As I’ve often said, a daily running streak turns out to be more about time management than self-discipline or physical sacrifice. The challenge essentially lies in refusing to let a day go by in which I cannot carve out ten minutes or more for running. And that’s a challenge I’ve managed to take on for the past 1,100 days.

I did my three-year run on one of my all-time favorite running routes, the Ute Avenue Trail into the North Star Preserve in Aspen. It’s a run I’ve been doing occasionally over the past five years, ever since we started vacationing in this specific location. I’ve done it enough now that I can visualize almost every twist and turn, even when I’m home in Massachusetts, two thousand miles away from this particular pathway. The route begins behind our condo and passes past the ancient Ute Cemetery and the abandoned Ute Avenue playground (which my kids call “the playground in the middle of nowhere”), winds through the grounds of the ritzy Aspen Club, heads back up to the highway, and then leads through the meadows running alongside the road that heads east toward Independence Pass.

I love this particular route because the scenery is magnificent and so is the people-watching. I pass the high wild grasses surrounding the little cemetery and then the whitewater shallows of the Roaring Fork. Later, I cross a bridge and pass by two beaver ponds; once I saw a beaver swimming. And then I pass through the wide panoramic vistas of the meadows, from which I can see sagebrush, foothills, mountains, and lots of sky. Often, in the morning, there are paragliders sailing into their descent.

There are also other runners on this route, which is a vacation novelty for me. People of all ages, sizes and speeds use this same trail. On this trip, I have regularly encountered a young couple who run fast and push a jog-stroller with a very small baby in it; a woman with long gray hair and a powerful stride; a woman about my age who runs strong and fast; a man with thick white eyebrows and thick gray hair who runs at about my leisurely pace; an elderly man who has the momentum of a runner but barely moves along at all. It underscores the message that almost anyone can enjoy running.

Enjoying running is just what I’ve done, daily for three years now. As I often say, at this point I’d need a reason to stop the daily streak rather than a reason to continue it. So far, I haven’t had one. Eventually I might. But for the time being, I just feel lucky to get out on the road every day, whether the road is a footpath in the Colorado Rockies, the long driveway out to Bedford Road at home, or any of the handful of places in between that I’ve run over the past three years. Eleven hundred days and counting. Why? I’m not sure, but for now, I’ll take it.