Just a little less than three months ago, on August 15, I passed the five-year mark of my daily running streak. Shortly after that date, the director of the United States Running Streak Association wrote to me to ask if I wanted to write something about meeting this milestone for the association’s quarterly magazine.
“When’s the deadline?” I asked. At that moment, I couldn’t think of a single thing to say about hitting the five-year mark.
He told me it was November 15. That sounded far away, a whole season away, the difference between summer vacation and the middle of the fall semester for the kids, the distance between watching the sun set long after an outdoor cookout and commuting home at 5 p.m. in the dark.
But, as so often happens, it was here before I knew it. And I still don’t really have anything.
I’m accustomed to writing on deadline. Weekly articles, monthly newspaper columns, twice-weekly blog posts, regular assignments for a medical website: having to produce copy, whether or not I have anything important to communicate, is truly second nature for me.
Except for this time. Five years of daily running? I just can’t think of a thing to say about it.
I know that may sound improbable. Yes, there’s been some challenging weather, of both the frigid and scorching variety as well as snowstorms and hurricanes. Yes, there have been a couple of migraines and stomach viruses through which I had to run. Early days, late nights, pre-dawn running. High altitude, unfamiliar neighborhoods, hotel parking lots.
But when you run every day, it all kind of blurs together. As I’ve said before, I don’t think about running any more than I think about taking a shower. Which is to say now and then I have to set my alarm extra early or push myself to fit in in, but most of the time, it’s just an inevitable part of my day, one that happens without thinking.
A few weeks ago, I came across this passage on a blog called The Logic of Long Distance. It summarized my feelings about running better than I could.
"Running doesn't offer a coherent plan or life strategy; it doesn't pretend to completeness or offer the secrets to a well-lived life. What it gives us is a way out of the plans and meanings and senses that have begun to seem virtual and hollow. A run gives life no meaning. It simply reminds us that beyond the sense that life makes, there is so much more life."
Yes. Maybe the reason I don’t have anything to say about my five-year running streak anniversary is that there just isn’t really anything to say. It has no special meaning. It’s just….running. For the sake of running. And in a way that I can’t explain, that’s reason enough.
Showing posts with label USRSA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label USRSA. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
How to do a running streak: Simplest advice
Through the vagaries of social media in general and Twitter in particular, I stumbled across a group of cyber-friends a week or two ago who were all planning to start a running streak on August 1st. “Welcome to the ranks,” I told them, and enjoyed reading their posts as they built up to the big Running Streak Day One.
My own running streak, following the guidelines stipulated by the U.S. Running Streak Association (USRSA), began on August 15th of 2007. So later this month, I’ll cross the four-year threshold, and since I’m at day 1452 right now, by the end of September I’ll reach Day 1500, another appealing milestone.
Whether this puts me in any position to give advice to the cadre who started their streak yesterday is up for debate. According to the categorization system of the U.S. Running Streak Association, I’m still a neophyte – and will be until I reach the five-year mark twelve months from now. After 1452 days, I can’t exactly say I feel like a neophyte, but of course, to the longest-term streakers on the registry, who have over forty years of daily running under their belts (or under their insoles), calling me a neophyte may even be putting it kindly.
Still, most people who know me and know of my streak do not know other streak runners who are up in the decades-long rather than years-long echelons, so it is to me that they turn with questions. Or one question, really: How do you do it? Maybe it makes sense for me to give advice and maybe not, but here are a few of my standard answers.
• Although most streak runners cover more than a mile a day – many are long-distance or even marathon runners, and my standard is 2 miles per weekday run and 4-6 miles each weekend day – a mere mile is all it takes to qualify for a streak according to the USRSA. And running one mile doesn’t take long. Even a slow runner like me can cover a mile in ten minutes. So even though I’ve never been a smoker, I sometimes liken it to a cigarette break – or, in more contemporary terms, the time some people take out of other activities to check their email and update their Facebook page. Ten minutes. Go out, come back, you’re done. Not that difficult to fit in at all.
• No matter how busy your day is, everyone has a first-thing-in-the-morning. No one stays up all through the night, every night. So no matter how busy the day ahead may be, you can always set your alarm ten or twenty or forty-five minutes earlier to fit in a run. I usually, though not always, run first thing in the morning – whether “first thing” means 7:30 on a Saturday, 6:00 on a weekday during the school year, or 4:45 on the occasional travel day when I’m heading off to the airport for a morning flight. Sometimes I run at the end of the day, but only when I’m unable to force myself out of bed early enough to go in the morning.
• As Yogi Berra purportedly said, it’s not over ‘til it’s over. The day, that is. I try to avoid delaying my run into the late evening, but when it happens, it happens. In my memoir about streak running, I described the latest run I did that year or in fact any time since: it was at 9:45 at night. I wasn’t happy about it, but I still fit it in. My streak-running mentor, who logged a 32-year streak before a heart attack sidelined him for six weeks (after which he began another streak), once began his daily run at 11:50 p.m. It was just a mile that day, and he fit it in before midnight.
• Shed the habit that non-daily runners have of deciding whether or not it’s a good day for a run. Once you’ve resolved that you’re going to do a streak, that question becomes irrelevant, and I found it quite liberating to stop thinking that way. You’ll actually save time as well as mental effort in your day once you no longer have to think about whether you’re going to fit in a run. You are. Case closed. No more time wasted vacillating over that question.
• Another motto I tell myself is this one: You can always run slower. (No one has ever accused me of having a talent for catchy mottos.) The USRSA stipulates how long a distance you have to run to qualify as a streaker, but not how fast you have to run it. As long as there is some fraction of a millisecond between every footstrike when both feet are off the ground, you’re running. Having a tough day of it, or don’t even feel like running at all? Run slowly. You’ll still finish that mile in less than fifteen minutes.
• Any kind of weather is bearable for a mile. Again, I don’t mean to imply that most streakers run only a mile a day. Most run longer, although one exception is Boston Globe sportswriter Dan Shaughnessy, whom I actually profiled in the first chapter of my book. He runs one mile and claims he has never once gone a single step farther. In any case, though most of us do more than a mile a day, no matter how cold or hot or icy or humid or rainy or snowy it is, there’s no kind of weather that’s too miserable for you to be out in it for ten minutes. Wear ten layers, or wear almost nothing at all. Do whatever the weather calls for. You’ll be back indoors before you know it.
• In my experience, it’s critical that you have a running route that is reliably safe. By safe, I mean both from traffic and from other dangers. My belief is that you can’t maintain a streak if running in the dark – whether that’s pre-dawn or post-dusk – is not an option. I’m lucky to live at the end of a half-mile-long cul-de-sac on which the only traffic is drivers going to and from the handful of houses on the road. On the days that it is most inconvenient to run, whether due to darkness or weather, I can simply run down our road and back and be done. Not everyone has this luxury, but remember, covering a mile or more doesn’t mean you have to run in a straight line. You can do laps around a high school track – or even a supermarket parking lot -- if you need to.
That’s probably enough advice from someone who has already admitted she may not be in any position to give advice. I don’t even think about the running streak anymore, except as an objective number that I post on Twitter and in my running log daily. But I don’t think about “Oh yeah, I need to do that daily run once again. Or not.”
Running is like brushing my teeth at this point: a new day has dawned, so it must be time to go for a run. That attitude has brought me to the brink of the four-year mark. I’m still a neophyte, but I hope eventually to be well into a decades-long streak.
Maybe if that happens, I’ll have still more insights. But I don’t think so. I think it’s really pretty simple. If you want to do a streak, go out today and run. And do it again tomorrow.
For a look at my streak-running memoir, just click on the image of the book at the top of this page. You can also find the e-book through Amazon.com.)
My own running streak, following the guidelines stipulated by the U.S. Running Streak Association (USRSA), began on August 15th of 2007. So later this month, I’ll cross the four-year threshold, and since I’m at day 1452 right now, by the end of September I’ll reach Day 1500, another appealing milestone.
Whether this puts me in any position to give advice to the cadre who started their streak yesterday is up for debate. According to the categorization system of the U.S. Running Streak Association, I’m still a neophyte – and will be until I reach the five-year mark twelve months from now. After 1452 days, I can’t exactly say I feel like a neophyte, but of course, to the longest-term streakers on the registry, who have over forty years of daily running under their belts (or under their insoles), calling me a neophyte may even be putting it kindly.
Still, most people who know me and know of my streak do not know other streak runners who are up in the decades-long rather than years-long echelons, so it is to me that they turn with questions. Or one question, really: How do you do it? Maybe it makes sense for me to give advice and maybe not, but here are a few of my standard answers.
• Although most streak runners cover more than a mile a day – many are long-distance or even marathon runners, and my standard is 2 miles per weekday run and 4-6 miles each weekend day – a mere mile is all it takes to qualify for a streak according to the USRSA. And running one mile doesn’t take long. Even a slow runner like me can cover a mile in ten minutes. So even though I’ve never been a smoker, I sometimes liken it to a cigarette break – or, in more contemporary terms, the time some people take out of other activities to check their email and update their Facebook page. Ten minutes. Go out, come back, you’re done. Not that difficult to fit in at all.
• No matter how busy your day is, everyone has a first-thing-in-the-morning. No one stays up all through the night, every night. So no matter how busy the day ahead may be, you can always set your alarm ten or twenty or forty-five minutes earlier to fit in a run. I usually, though not always, run first thing in the morning – whether “first thing” means 7:30 on a Saturday, 6:00 on a weekday during the school year, or 4:45 on the occasional travel day when I’m heading off to the airport for a morning flight. Sometimes I run at the end of the day, but only when I’m unable to force myself out of bed early enough to go in the morning.
• As Yogi Berra purportedly said, it’s not over ‘til it’s over. The day, that is. I try to avoid delaying my run into the late evening, but when it happens, it happens. In my memoir about streak running, I described the latest run I did that year or in fact any time since: it was at 9:45 at night. I wasn’t happy about it, but I still fit it in. My streak-running mentor, who logged a 32-year streak before a heart attack sidelined him for six weeks (after which he began another streak), once began his daily run at 11:50 p.m. It was just a mile that day, and he fit it in before midnight.
• Shed the habit that non-daily runners have of deciding whether or not it’s a good day for a run. Once you’ve resolved that you’re going to do a streak, that question becomes irrelevant, and I found it quite liberating to stop thinking that way. You’ll actually save time as well as mental effort in your day once you no longer have to think about whether you’re going to fit in a run. You are. Case closed. No more time wasted vacillating over that question.
• Another motto I tell myself is this one: You can always run slower. (No one has ever accused me of having a talent for catchy mottos.) The USRSA stipulates how long a distance you have to run to qualify as a streaker, but not how fast you have to run it. As long as there is some fraction of a millisecond between every footstrike when both feet are off the ground, you’re running. Having a tough day of it, or don’t even feel like running at all? Run slowly. You’ll still finish that mile in less than fifteen minutes.
• Any kind of weather is bearable for a mile. Again, I don’t mean to imply that most streakers run only a mile a day. Most run longer, although one exception is Boston Globe sportswriter Dan Shaughnessy, whom I actually profiled in the first chapter of my book. He runs one mile and claims he has never once gone a single step farther. In any case, though most of us do more than a mile a day, no matter how cold or hot or icy or humid or rainy or snowy it is, there’s no kind of weather that’s too miserable for you to be out in it for ten minutes. Wear ten layers, or wear almost nothing at all. Do whatever the weather calls for. You’ll be back indoors before you know it.
• In my experience, it’s critical that you have a running route that is reliably safe. By safe, I mean both from traffic and from other dangers. My belief is that you can’t maintain a streak if running in the dark – whether that’s pre-dawn or post-dusk – is not an option. I’m lucky to live at the end of a half-mile-long cul-de-sac on which the only traffic is drivers going to and from the handful of houses on the road. On the days that it is most inconvenient to run, whether due to darkness or weather, I can simply run down our road and back and be done. Not everyone has this luxury, but remember, covering a mile or more doesn’t mean you have to run in a straight line. You can do laps around a high school track – or even a supermarket parking lot -- if you need to.
That’s probably enough advice from someone who has already admitted she may not be in any position to give advice. I don’t even think about the running streak anymore, except as an objective number that I post on Twitter and in my running log daily. But I don’t think about “Oh yeah, I need to do that daily run once again. Or not.”
Running is like brushing my teeth at this point: a new day has dawned, so it must be time to go for a run. That attitude has brought me to the brink of the four-year mark. I’m still a neophyte, but I hope eventually to be well into a decades-long streak.
Maybe if that happens, I’ll have still more insights. But I don’t think so. I think it’s really pretty simple. If you want to do a streak, go out today and run. And do it again tomorrow.
For a look at my streak-running memoir, just click on the image of the book at the top of this page. You can also find the e-book through Amazon.com.)
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Through sleet or snow for my daily mile
One of the best things about making a commitment to run every day is the close connection it’s required me to forge with the natural world.
And one of the worst things about making a commitment to run every day is the close connection it’s required me to forge with the natural world.
What’s good about it is that I never find myself oblivious to the weather the way I once did. Especially for people who work in offices full-time and commute by car, it’s so easy to go from home to car to office and eight hours later do the whole thing in reverse without spending any time outdoors. For people like me who live in houses with attached garages or work in buildings with garages, it can be even more extreme. Living in the city and walking to work or to the subway, as I did when I was in my twenties, I often complained about the freezing cold or rainy or slippery conditions, but at least I couldn’t overlook them. When I returned to full-time office work in May of 2006 after four years at home with children, I remember the first few days on the job I would leave the building at 5 PM and want to cry for the fact that I hadn’t drawn a breath of fresh air or felt a ray of natural light on my face in more than eight hours. And when I lost my full-time job, one of the very first things I felt cheerful about regarding my unwanted change of circumstamces was the opportunity to be part of the outdoors again throughout my regular day.
Still, even when the opportunities present themselves, it’s easy these days to avoid the natural world when the weather is less than ideal. We can still drive the kids to the bus stop, spend the day in the house, even exercise on the stationary bike or treadmill or at the gym and avoid exposure to the natural world when it gets really hot, or really cold, or rainy.
When I joined the United States Running Streak Association two years ago and made a commitment to run every day, I promised myself that even though the official USRSA guidelines allow treadmill running to count toward the daily minimum mile, I wouldn’t go that route. Like a lot of the other men and women on the USRSA registry, I resolved that for me, running meant running outdoors.
So for the past 856 days, regardless of the weather, I’ve spent at least ten minutes outside doing my daily mile.
I think about it a lot at this time of year because this is when it gets most difficult. Cold temperatures; ice on the ground; and such an early nightfall. Yesterday I had an all-day on-site contract position which would keep me away from home from 8:30 AM to 6 PM, so I did my run first thing in the morning. It was still pitch black out, and even though the freezing temperatures of the weekend had abated somewhat, the result was melting ice and slushy puddles all over the roadway. In the dark, I slipped and slid and stepped in frigid puddles that my headlamp failed to pick out ahead of me.
Still, I believe ultimately it’s a positive thing to stay in close touch with the natural environment. There are plenty of days in the winter I don’t feel like going out for a run. During our first year of daily running together, my son Tim and I almost always had to run in the dark on weekdays because of my work schedule. Coping with icy winds, slippery roads, patches of snow and sleety rainfall was part of the foundation of the tight bond we forged during that first year of running together. Together we discovered that there’s almost no temperature so low – at least in Massachusetts – that three layers of fleece can’t make it bearable for ten minutes. We learned to wear face masks and scarves as well as hats and gloves. We bought Yak Traks, the nylon webbing that stretches over the soles of shoes to give runners traction. We endured.
Now it’s winter again, and I’m already dealing with snow (not a lot, but enough to make the footpaths treacherous), ice, and short daylight hours again. But having to cope with those conditions, even by choice, even for just ten or twelve minutes a day, reminds me of the cyclical nature of seasons. We’re only a week from Winter Solstice. The daylight will soon last longer; the ice will melt. Springtime running will be back before I know it.
And one of the worst things about making a commitment to run every day is the close connection it’s required me to forge with the natural world.
What’s good about it is that I never find myself oblivious to the weather the way I once did. Especially for people who work in offices full-time and commute by car, it’s so easy to go from home to car to office and eight hours later do the whole thing in reverse without spending any time outdoors. For people like me who live in houses with attached garages or work in buildings with garages, it can be even more extreme. Living in the city and walking to work or to the subway, as I did when I was in my twenties, I often complained about the freezing cold or rainy or slippery conditions, but at least I couldn’t overlook them. When I returned to full-time office work in May of 2006 after four years at home with children, I remember the first few days on the job I would leave the building at 5 PM and want to cry for the fact that I hadn’t drawn a breath of fresh air or felt a ray of natural light on my face in more than eight hours. And when I lost my full-time job, one of the very first things I felt cheerful about regarding my unwanted change of circumstamces was the opportunity to be part of the outdoors again throughout my regular day.
Still, even when the opportunities present themselves, it’s easy these days to avoid the natural world when the weather is less than ideal. We can still drive the kids to the bus stop, spend the day in the house, even exercise on the stationary bike or treadmill or at the gym and avoid exposure to the natural world when it gets really hot, or really cold, or rainy.
When I joined the United States Running Streak Association two years ago and made a commitment to run every day, I promised myself that even though the official USRSA guidelines allow treadmill running to count toward the daily minimum mile, I wouldn’t go that route. Like a lot of the other men and women on the USRSA registry, I resolved that for me, running meant running outdoors.
So for the past 856 days, regardless of the weather, I’ve spent at least ten minutes outside doing my daily mile.
I think about it a lot at this time of year because this is when it gets most difficult. Cold temperatures; ice on the ground; and such an early nightfall. Yesterday I had an all-day on-site contract position which would keep me away from home from 8:30 AM to 6 PM, so I did my run first thing in the morning. It was still pitch black out, and even though the freezing temperatures of the weekend had abated somewhat, the result was melting ice and slushy puddles all over the roadway. In the dark, I slipped and slid and stepped in frigid puddles that my headlamp failed to pick out ahead of me.
Still, I believe ultimately it’s a positive thing to stay in close touch with the natural environment. There are plenty of days in the winter I don’t feel like going out for a run. During our first year of daily running together, my son Tim and I almost always had to run in the dark on weekdays because of my work schedule. Coping with icy winds, slippery roads, patches of snow and sleety rainfall was part of the foundation of the tight bond we forged during that first year of running together. Together we discovered that there’s almost no temperature so low – at least in Massachusetts – that three layers of fleece can’t make it bearable for ten minutes. We learned to wear face masks and scarves as well as hats and gloves. We bought Yak Traks, the nylon webbing that stretches over the soles of shoes to give runners traction. We endured.
Now it’s winter again, and I’m already dealing with snow (not a lot, but enough to make the footpaths treacherous), ice, and short daylight hours again. But having to cope with those conditions, even by choice, even for just ten or twelve minutes a day, reminds me of the cyclical nature of seasons. We’re only a week from Winter Solstice. The daylight will soon last longer; the ice will melt. Springtime running will be back before I know it.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
What I learned running in the rain today
Rain was falling when I woke up just before 6 this morning. At about 11, the clouds parted and the sun was shining, so I headed out for a run. And for the second time in five days, the weather changed dramatically about five minutes into my run. On Saturday it was a downpour; today it was steady rain and rapidly increasing wind gusts.
Though I had planned to do my usual weekday 2-miler, I turned back a little early and ended up running 1.5 miles, which is fine as far as my streak is concerned – the USRSA officially allows a minimum of a mile a day for maintaining a streak – but it was disappointing as far as wanting to build my mileage for the week.
As I ran home, I thought about how I usually say I’m fine with running in the rain, especially when temperatures are as mild as they are today. (Many times, I’ve paraphrased Amby Burfoot’s quote about how the only kind of weather not great for running is 34 degrees and raining, and I’ve run in 34-and-raining dozens of times over the past two years.) This was a steady but not soaking rain, and I realized what was bothering me wasn’t the water falling on me but the fear of what might happen.
That’ so often what slows us down, whether running or doing anything else: the fear of things getting worse. I didn’t mind the rain, and I didn’t mind the wind either, which was sending yellow leaves soaring through the air almost in formation. It was the fear that lightning would develop or that a tree would fall on me. Wind has never scared me until last year, when a summer weather patterns brought twisters to our region.
If I only knew that nothing worse than wind and rain would happen, I’d be fine with this weather, I kept thinking. But that’s always the real problem, isn’t it: not fear of what is happening but fear of what could happen?
And this transpires in other ways too, not just with fear. When I was in my twenties, I did so much writing and tried so hard to get published and it just never worked. I remember once thinking, “If I knew this was necessary practice, laying the groundwork for a future career, I’d be fine with all the rejections. What bothers me is worrying that it’s not going to get any better for me.” Of course, in retrospect, that’s exactly what it was: learning the ropes for a career that took a turn in the following decade, when I started getting plenty of work published, based on the lessons I absorbed during all those rejection years.
Now, as I try to pursue increasingly bigger projects, I often have the same thought: rejection is fine if it’s a steppingstone to learning something and consequently improving, but what if rejection is all I’ll see?
And so, the lesson seems to be to remember how much we hamper ourselves with anxiety about what’s ahead. Is this just a windy day to be out running, or is a twister about to touch down? I’m fine running in a steady rain, but am I about to be struck by lightning? Oh well, you can’t expect every piece of writing to get published the first time you send it out, but what if this rejection means it’s unpublishable?
Once again, the operative concept is mindful living. Just as it’s a mistake to spend too much of the present looking forward to good things yet to come – which I think we tend to do when we’re younger, looking forward to college, or graduation, or working, or being married – it’s just as big a mistake to spend too much of the present worrying about what might happen. I ran and got wet; I did not stumble into a tornado, and no trees fell on me. It was just a wet run in a steady rain. And next time I’ll try to enjoy it a little more.
Though I had planned to do my usual weekday 2-miler, I turned back a little early and ended up running 1.5 miles, which is fine as far as my streak is concerned – the USRSA officially allows a minimum of a mile a day for maintaining a streak – but it was disappointing as far as wanting to build my mileage for the week.
As I ran home, I thought about how I usually say I’m fine with running in the rain, especially when temperatures are as mild as they are today. (Many times, I’ve paraphrased Amby Burfoot’s quote about how the only kind of weather not great for running is 34 degrees and raining, and I’ve run in 34-and-raining dozens of times over the past two years.) This was a steady but not soaking rain, and I realized what was bothering me wasn’t the water falling on me but the fear of what might happen.
That’ so often what slows us down, whether running or doing anything else: the fear of things getting worse. I didn’t mind the rain, and I didn’t mind the wind either, which was sending yellow leaves soaring through the air almost in formation. It was the fear that lightning would develop or that a tree would fall on me. Wind has never scared me until last year, when a summer weather patterns brought twisters to our region.
If I only knew that nothing worse than wind and rain would happen, I’d be fine with this weather, I kept thinking. But that’s always the real problem, isn’t it: not fear of what is happening but fear of what could happen?
And this transpires in other ways too, not just with fear. When I was in my twenties, I did so much writing and tried so hard to get published and it just never worked. I remember once thinking, “If I knew this was necessary practice, laying the groundwork for a future career, I’d be fine with all the rejections. What bothers me is worrying that it’s not going to get any better for me.” Of course, in retrospect, that’s exactly what it was: learning the ropes for a career that took a turn in the following decade, when I started getting plenty of work published, based on the lessons I absorbed during all those rejection years.
Now, as I try to pursue increasingly bigger projects, I often have the same thought: rejection is fine if it’s a steppingstone to learning something and consequently improving, but what if rejection is all I’ll see?
And so, the lesson seems to be to remember how much we hamper ourselves with anxiety about what’s ahead. Is this just a windy day to be out running, or is a twister about to touch down? I’m fine running in a steady rain, but am I about to be struck by lightning? Oh well, you can’t expect every piece of writing to get published the first time you send it out, but what if this rejection means it’s unpublishable?
Once again, the operative concept is mindful living. Just as it’s a mistake to spend too much of the present looking forward to good things yet to come – which I think we tend to do when we’re younger, looking forward to college, or graduation, or working, or being married – it’s just as big a mistake to spend too much of the present worrying about what might happen. I ran and got wet; I did not stumble into a tornado, and no trees fell on me. It was just a wet run in a steady rain. And next time I’ll try to enjoy it a little more.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Running Streak Day 758: Why bother with just a mile?
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.
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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