Three years ago, I was in a very different place. As I wrote in this initial post about my run streak, I was still teaching at the time and knew I needed to quit because I wasn’t happy, but didn’t have a plan of what I would do after. The uncertainty of that gave me a lot of anxiety. Yes, The Bearded One and I were married at that point, so it wasn’t quite as imperative for me to find a source of income because he would have had my back if I couldn’t. But we hadn’t even quite been married for a year yet, and I didn’t like the idea of depending on anyone at all. Plus it made me feel deficient in some way that I couldn’t bring myself to just suck it up and keep teaching. It was a really hard time for me, emotionally. And when someone I knew from high school posted about her run streak on Facebook, it planted a little seed in my head. I thought about how out of control my life felt, and I decided that I needed something I could have control over. Plus, when you’re a teacher, as with many roles in life, that’s often part of your identity. And even though I knew that teaching Spanish full time wasn’t what I wanted to do for the next twenty years, it was hard to leave that part of myself behind. The idea of starting something new that I could be proud of was super attractive. So I did.
I still remember that first mile. I had run sporadically over the years, but it was always to train for a race, and once the race was over I would just kind of stop. So, my old running shoes were worn out, and I didn’t have very good running clothes for early May since I was always kind of a fair weather runner. It was hard, because I didn’t take a lot of time for things like exercise when I was teaching full time. But I got it done. And then I went out the next day and did it again. I remember being really proud when I hit a week. And then when I made it to a month. I got new shoes, and some new running clothes, and the miles started to get easier. The first time I shared about it on social media I was at 60 days in a row of running at least a mile every day, and that felt like quite the feat! There were days that I definitely didn’t want to do it, but I started it without an end date in mind, so I just kept going. And now it’s three years later, and it’s pretty much never a question of whether or not I’m going to run–it’s just a matter of when.
There have been some close calls, where I almost broke my streak. In the first few months of my streak there was the time we were stuck in my brother’s basement for a few hours because of a tornado warning, and we didn’t make it home until after 11:30pm, but I changed my clothes quick, and got it done before midnight. Just before I hit two years of running every day, I lightly sprained my ankle (while stepping off a step…) and almost broke my streak, but I managed to limp through a few pretty painful days and keep it going. Year three was the most challenging so far. I ran through a mild case of COVID (wearing a mask for some of my runs, and avoiding the neighborhood up the road for my quarantine period so I didn’t spread it to anybody). There have been polar vortexes (vortices?) and rain and heat and snow and ice. And, although I did use the treadmill a few times in the first year, the last two years+ I’ve actually run outside every day, most of them with my dog Marty along for a trot.
My hardest run yet was probably after that nasty case food poisoning I blogged about last week. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to go for a run roughly 16 hours after your body finally stopped trying to purge itself of whatever you ate that it found to be unacceptable, but it’s rough. I’d slept all day and was still dehydrated, with no real fuel other than about 8 saltine crackers and a few ounces of ginger ale that I managed to keep down. My mom saw me running that day and I believe she used the phrase “pretty droopy” to describe how I looked, but I made sure that both my feet were off the ground at the same time over and over for a whole mile, so even though my pace was about two and a half minutes slower than usual, it counts.
Yesterday, I celebrated hitting three years of my run streak by buying myself some new running tank tops, my favorite of which has a picture of a turtle on it and says “Turtley Awesome” (I never claimed to be a fast runner). And today (day number 1,097) was the first day of the fourth year of my run streak. I still don’t have an end date in mind, and I love the feeling of accomplishment I get when I think about the number of days I’ve kept it up and the things I’ve run through. But I’m also at a point in life where I don’t need to cling to my streak for a sense of stability anymore. My life is really pretty great, and when my streak does eventually have to come to an end for some reason, I think I could be at peace with it.
I joined a Facebook group of run streakers recently, and in one post, someone asked about breaking a streak, and whether it’s better to plan an end date for it, or to keep going until you can’t anymore. It’s an interesting question, and one I hadn’t considered before. I’ve always felt like I wanted to keep running every day until I can’t anymore, but I can see how it might be appealing to choose to end it instead of letting circumstances make the choice for you. One streaker commented something to the effect that when her streak ends, because they all will, she’ll just need to transition from thinking about it as something she’s accomplishing to thinking about it as something she accomplished. I think that’s a great way to look at things, especially as I move into middle age and some things are harder than they used to be. Going forward, if there’s something I used to be able to do, but can’t or don’t want to do anymore, I’m going to try to remember that quote. And try to remind myself that getting older doesn’t have to mean the end of anything, really–it can just be the beginning of thinking about something in a different way. But for now, my run streak continues! The next fun run streak milestone for me will be 1,234 days–that’s only 137 days away!
growingmoxie.com 