53 Days Running in a Row!

My old house mate Henry has taken up running and as usual he’s really going for it. Hadn’t seen him in a while and he tells me he’s running like 4 or 5 days a week! To me this was amazing! Why? Well, I’ve always liked running, with the pinnacle being winning the 100metres and the 4x100m relay at sports day as a kid. Also over the years have done Park Runs, various 5kms, 10k’s and half-marathons + have run the London Marathon back in 2011 and Stockholm Marathon in 2018, BUT have never trained more than 2 or 3 days a week, except one possible time when I think I ran for 4 days in a week, but that was as a test to absolutely force myself. Anyways…People sometimes don’t believe this(seems it’s common belief that anyone that runs a marathon must run at least 6 days a week) and like most things I guess I kind of “get away” with it, but the reasons are :

1) I play tennis and bike it quite a bit on the side.

2) A combination of laziness and various tennis/running injuries have made me quite careful and cautious of over-training. One time I ran on an ankle(or knee) injury that subsequently took me out for about 9 weeks. Another time I seriously thought I’d broken my foot.

3) It never occurred to me to run more than what was needed.

4) I’m generally not disciplined in anything and get distracted easily to consider such a thing.

Anyway, after hearing Henry, I decided I had to step things up a bit and try to run for at least 5 days in a row! After the second “run”,  which involved a slightly tight, bruised knee and the fear of worsening it, I invented one simple rule – a “run” must consist of a distance of at least 2km(just over a mile) and be non-stop “running” ie. not walking. Yes, this challenge would require something of  distance, but be short enough so busyness was not a valid excuse to miss a day.

Managing to do the 5 days alright, I thought why not extend this effort to 6 days, then 7, as that’d be a full week. That then became 10 days and so on until I hit about 16 days in a row. My aim now moved on to 20, then 25 and then 30 – as that would be a full month! No, can’t stop there, because 31 days is a full month. Now once I’d hit that 31 day target, it dawned on me that loads of people have run for a whole month in a row and this played on my mind(there are lots of blogs out there) + I have friends who’ll probably match that one day, so decided it would best to keep going. After reaching about 35 days, I chose 50 as the new and final target, as I had really started to want a day off by then.

How did I find it? Due to my work, social-life and generally being a Yes man for last minute invites, fitting in the daily run would often prove difficult. I ended up running at all times of day and night, from 2am in the morning to 11pm at night. I ran after breakfast/lunch/dinner, before breakfast/lunch/dinner, before going to the airport, after landing in a new country. I ran across different countryside, towns, cities and countries – wearing proper running clothes & shoes, wearing formal shoes, wide awake or very tired. I came to like the daily discipline and got somewhat addicted to it, it was an unusal experience of having to plan when and where to run, instead of just leaving it to chance. It was quite a fun and challenging up to about Day 31, after that I really wanted a day off, as I suspect my natural randomness was getting bored by the “having” to do it. Amazing really considering it could be reduced to about 15mins out of my day. Oh did I get any fitter? It’s hard to say, probably yes, but who knows to the manner of ending 😀

Anything disastrous happen? Errm yes, in Portugal I managed to slip over on a marble floor at the end of a run and break my bloomin’ collar bone! Amusingly I didn’t realise that it was broken, spending a few days hoping it was just severly bruised, so the last 2 runs were actually with a broken collar bone! That’s when I decided to definitely stop 😀

Running diary :