I wasn’t entirely making up the story. Some people do listen to what I have to say. Take my colleague, Paul. He’s a fantastic writer with a busy family life. Still he is taking time to look after his health with weekly hockey games, kettlebell classes and running. With a little nudging last year, I convinced my nearest deskmate to do a running streak. (Let’s just forget for a moment that I didn’t complete the streak.)
Because Paul doesn’t have a blog, I invited him to share his experiences with the Runners’ World running streak for his second time. (I hope he doesn’t mind I turned around and snapped this pic at work yesterday!) Read on and let me what you think about running streaks in the comments. I am sure Paul would love to hear some tips or some advice too.
introduced me to the #RWRunStreak in the fall of 2013 and I was intrigued
enough to give it a try.
years, I was attracted to the challenge of getting out there every day for more
than a month, regardless of bad weather days, tiredness and general feelings of
“Must lie on couch. Do not want to run today.”
It turned out to be a bigger challenge than I expected, largely because of
horrible winter weather. The warmest day I ran in the whole 35 days was OC and
the coldest was -36C – and about half of the days were -15 C or worse. Plenty
of snow and ice also made traction an issue most days.
My mood sometimes was not helped by #RWRunStreak posts from Californians
patting themselves on the back for running when the temperature had plunged to
50F and marvelling that they could see their breath.
However, the five-km community run on New Year’s Day that capped off the run
streak was memorable and the achievement was satisfying.
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| Paul with wife Lana and friend Annette on the New Year’s Day run. |
the run streak was the lack of pressure to pile on mileage or pick up speed.
The goal was always just to get out every day.
Like many overly optimistic runners, I tend to push harder and harder as I get
into better shape until something snaps in my 49-year-old body and I end up
hurt. Middle-age and a desk job can be a bad combination when it comes to
sports heroics.
splints, which put all running on hold this fall, I have lots of motivation for
not going out too hard this year.
So another #RWRunStreak
seemed like the way to go.
So far, so good.
has proven brutal but I have managed to get out every day, usually for at least
a couple of miles. As the weather improves, I
expect to stretch out runs a little.
There you have it, the 36-day countdown has begun.
~ Paul Cowley
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Follow Paul on Twitter to see how he’s doing with the streak. He’ll be back with a few posts over the next 30 days.
Stay tuned.