Streaking

“I used to run track in high school and was unexceptional in every way.” -Alex Guarnaschelli

I’m not a fan of Alex Guarnaschelli (that’s not to say that I wouldn’t be a fan if I was at all familiar with her–my research tells me she’s a chef and has been a judge on Chopped?), but based on this one quote, I think we could be friends.

I, too, ran track in high school and I, too, was completely unexceptional. After a year or so of running mostly the 200 meter distance on the JV team, but not really contributing much, I became a “thrower” of discus and shot put. I wasn’t good at that, either. At one track meet my sophomore year, I launched that metal frisbee and it somehow curved around the net (that was SUPPOSED to keep the heavy objects from going too far in the wrong direction), and went right through someone’s windshield. I guess that was kind of exceptional…

My senior year of high school, I decided to join the cross country team and set two goals for the season:

1. I would never walk during a race.
2. I would never come in last during a race.

I met those goals, but just barely.

After high school, I went several years without running at all. I’d decided I was a walker, not a runner. But then, somewhere around my 30th year, I was inspired to run a 5K. I trained for a while, building up to the distance, and I did it! In the years following, I did a few more 5K’s and, during the year after I met the Bearded One (who likes to run long distances), I even signed up to do a 10K and a Half-Marathon. I finished those races, but I certainly didn’t run the whole way so, even then, I didn’t really consider myself a runner. Then I went a couple of years without running much at all again.

This spring, I was unhappy enough with teaching (see my last blog about teaching here) that I’d decided I needed to find a job that wouldn’t require so much time outside of contract hours, but I had no idea what that job would be. I was stressed out, unsettled, and felt like I had very little control over my life and my future, when I saw a Facebook post by a girl I know from high school about her run streak. According to runeveryday.com, the definition of a running streak “is to run at least one mile (1.61 kilometers) within each calendar day. Running may occur on either the roads, a track, over hill and dale, or on a treadmill.” I’d seen this girl’s run streak posts before, and was impressed that she was so committed to running, but I never thought it would be something I would want to do. This last May, though, when I saw her post about reaching the five year mark of running at least a mile every day, I started thinking about trying it.

I went back and forth on it for a few days, and eventually came to the conclusion that, if this girl could keep a run streak going as a single mom with two young kids for much of it, I (in my childless state) should certainly be able to keep one going. And I decided it would be one thing I could do to build some confidence in myself and my ability to stick with something. I also knew that the regular exercise would help my physical, mental, and emotional health. So I started a run streak. On Wednesday, May 9th, 2018, I got home from school, relaxed a little, and then went out and ran the first mile I’d run (without stopping) in a long time. It was rough. It was painfully slow. I had a side stitch for most of it. But I wheezed my way through a full mile. And then I did it again the next day. And the next. And today makes 98 days since that first one.

It’s not always easy. The closest I’ve come to breaking my streak so far was day 32 when my family went to the Amana Colonies for the afternoon to celebrate my mom’s birthday. I didn’t run in the morning before we left, thinking I would have plenty of time to do it in the evening. But then, as we were about to leave for home, we discovered that there were reports of tornadoes on the ground pretty much directly in our path. So we went the other direction to wait out the storm at my brother and sister-in-law’s house. Sitting in their basement, as we watched the radar, looking for a break in the weather so we could head for home, I realized that I still hadn’t gotten my run in for the day and I started to panic. We finally saw an opening in the radar, and I probably drove much too fast through high winds and pouring rain, afraid that by the time we got back, it would be too late to get my run in before midnight. But I pulled in the driveway at about 20 minutes ’til, and I got that mile in with a spectacular lightning show illuminating my path.

Since the beginning of my streak in May, my average mile pace has dropped by about two minutes. I go out in the morning now most days, to beat the summer heat, and to get my run in before my day really starts so I don’t have to scramble to get it done later. I also usually walk a mile in addition to my mile run now, just because it feels good. I’m sleeping better, my head is clearer, I get daily views like the hazy sunrise in the photo above (from today’s run), and my clothes fit a little looser. After one of my runs in the first few weeks of the streak, I stopped in to chat with my Ma and she happened to show me an ad for the job that I now have which, incredibly, checks every one of the boxes I was looking for in a non-teaching job. And now, for probably the first time ever, I consider myself a runner. A slow runner, but a runner. I’m still only doing a little over a mile every day, and I’m not sure how long I’ll keep the streak up but, at this point, I don’t have any plans of stopping. ¡Viva la run streak!