Running legend Ron Hill ran every day for over 52 years.  That’s 19,032 days of running.  Holy crap!

I’ve never really got on with the idea of streak running. It always felt like it would be that little too much.  The tightness of my calves and achilles complain enough when my marathon training is picking up properly halfway through training plans.  However, December changed this.

Looking at my Strava totals towards the end of last year, I realised that I had some work to do if I wanted to break 2000k run in the year.   2017 saw me doing about 2042km, and to not even come close to that in 2018 seems like a bit of a let down.  So, I refocused, got my head down and went to work.

As a result, my mileage jumped massively, 149km in October, 142km in November to 294km in December leaving me at 2024km in 2018.  I’ve not come close to this mileage before in a month, and even more unusually, I ran every day from the 22nd of December, through to yesterday, the 10th of January.

I didn’t deliberately start run streaking; it being Christmas just meant there was more time and energy to fit a run in, and because I was chasing that distance I went with it.  There was a point though, when I suddenly became aware of it, and that’s down to Smashrun. Similar to the challenges in Strava, Smashrun has a whole bunch of badges you can collect for achieving certain things, and on Boxing Day my run triggered a popup telling me that I’d got the 5 for 5 badge earned for running every day for 5 days. Those tricksy pixels meant I suddenly has something to aim for, and even though I was well on the way to breaking 2000km for the year, I kept it up.

However, the race on Saturday in new cross country running shoes left my feet and ankles feeling quite sore, so I was quickly reminded that this might be a bad idea to keep going.  Someone sensible would have stopped and rested a bit then, but, damn those pixels, I decided to (carefully) keep going till today, so I could earn the 20 for 20 badge.   Damn those pixels.

So, now I rest for a couple of days.  I’ve a long run I need to do on Sunday which I think will be ok, but hopefully two days without a run will do me some good.

I’ve changed my outlook a little on the Run Every Day thing now.  Previously I thought it was a bit mad, but from this experience it does feel possible, and actually quite enjoyable, just to get out and do at least a mile.   We are after all born to run!  I just need to make sure that I’m careful in building up to it.  I may start a new streak in February and see how the feet and ankles hold out.