100 Consecutive Days

Today marks 100 days of running in a row. Although I know training is supposed to be a means to the real end goal which is racing, for those of us who are not competing at an elite level, I think that training itself can be an accomplishment. This is a major accomplishment for me. I don't tend to stick with things very well, as I've mentioned before in my post on the battle between now and later. When I started this streak on the first day of the year, I wasn't sure how long it would go.  I thought a month would be pretty sweet.  I figured something would come up and I would be forced to stop.

Well, things did come up, but I ran through them anyway. I have a cold now, but it's not too bad so I'm running through it.  I had a worse cold in January but I ran through that as well. Then, in February, April got a pretty bad stomach flu and I stayed home from work to take care of her and Lucy. I couldn't imagine getting a run in that day and I decided I would break my streak and focus on what was important: taking care of my family.  But then at 10 pm, I was downstairs watching the movie, Twins, while April and Lucy were upstairs finally asleep and I just kept thinking maybe I could get my run in. I was a bit torn because I felt like I was being pretty selfish, but I figured I could do it in a way so that it wouldn't affect anyone.  According to the streaking website, I only had to run 1 mile to keep the streak going. I grabbed my phone, and without changing, I ran out the door and ran up and down the street a few times until it was over a mile.  8 minutes later I was back inside and watching Twins and April and Lucy were still sleeping. After this run I realized that I was pretty committed to keeping this streak going. A couple weeks ago after increasing my weekly miles into the 60s I ran an ill-timed 10K time trial.  After that, my calf and Achilles were bothering me so I had to cut back the miles.  But I could not bring myself to stop running completely.  I now feel that I'm at a point in my training where barring any real serious injury or sickness, running a few miles at an easy pace feels like rest.  My body is just used to it and I love it.

So what's my plan now?  How long am I going to keep this going?  Truthfully, I don't know.  Perhaps after my 50 miler in May I'll need to take a break the next day, but who knows? I'm just going to keep it going until I don't.  At this point, when I wake up in the morning, the idea of not running seems crazy and that's the way I like it :)