My 365 Day Running Streak

Well, we finally did it! Today marks the day that we, my husband and I, can honestly say that we have completed the challenge of running for 365 days straight. That’s the whole year of 2017 spent running. That’s quite a feat for me, who even still struggles to call myself a runner.

But wait, let’s rewind to December 2016 and talk about how this running streak even came about. My husband, Adrian, has always been a fan of setting himself (what I consider to be) crazy fitness-related challenges. Cue the latest Google to find something for 2017 and he stumbled across the Mile A Day Challenge – yes, that does indeed abbreviate to MAD. The premise was simple, run a minimum of a mile every single day for the whole of 2017; you could run more if you wanted to, but it had to be at least a mile and you were committing to doing it every day. He suggested the idea to me and after first ignoring him completely, I decided to humor him and take part for a couple of weeks. After all, I am the girl who was resolutely in the tail end group of the dreaded school cross country runs and, as an adult, would train for an annual charity run only to complete it and drop off a virtual running cliff for the next 12 months. I didn’t like running and sure as heck didn’t want to commit to doing it every day!

However, I was at an all-time weight high, having moved to the USA 18 months before and spent a lot of time socialising and indulging in the American ‘fast food’ dream. I was feeling sluggish, unfit and, more motivating for me, didn’t fit in any of my clothes! Having told Adrian that I would start the MAD challenge with him, I even went as far as downloading the Strava app on day three to record my miles and keep me accountable.

The first run was along a very cold beach in Rhode Island, as part of a New Year’s Day family walk. It was a slow mile, somewhere in the region of 12 minutes, but at least I’d done it and could feel like the challenge had begun. Then we took to measuring out a mile route around our local neighbourhood, that would be our home or default mile. I didn’t know it then, but this was to become the route I would run more times than I could count. It was winter and, in New England, that means snowy and very cold, but I soon got used to bundling up in my cold-weather gear and felt determined not to let low temperatures put me off.

Soon a month had passed and I realised my attitude had started to change. I started to feel like the more days I ran, the more I would need to have a really good reason NOT to run. It was becoming easier to run a mile, the challenge was planning ahead to find a time to do it every day, after all, no matter how busy I was, I could always fit in fifteen minutes of time to do something for myself.

As the weather warmed up and the days went by, I began to intersperse my miles with longer runs; a mile was starting to feel like not quite enough. My pace was also increasing, something I hadn’t managed in previous running training. I realised that, on the many days when it really wasn’t convenient to run, I did it anyway but as quickly as I could to get it over with. There were days when I knew I had so much to do, fitting in a run meant getting up at 5am and being out before sunrise before my husband left for work, so that he could be at home with our young children; or finding myself on the treadmill, which a friend had thankfully gifted to us, at 10pm at night putting in a slow, nauseating, post-dinner mile. Other times, I felt under the weather, or my muscles were aching from a long run the day before. Then there were days when we spent 10 hours road tripping in this beautiful country we currently call home, which meant pulling over, changing into running kit and doing our mile and yes, there were also a couple of hangovers along the way! Together with being a bit more selective about what I ate, I had lost 15 lbs in weight, was routinely running a sub 9 minute mile and was feeling fitter than I probably ever had. I took the plunge and entered my first half marathon in November and can genuinely say I did it comfortably.

Over the course of the year, I ran in some absolutely incredible places, from Central Park to the Shenandoah Valley; the jaw-dropping beauty of Acadia National Park and the Maine Wilderness to the Canadian stunning vistas of Cape Breton Island and Peggy’s Cove. I’d run in the mountains, on the beach, in cities, on busy roads and even a couple of sketchy neighbourhoods! Through bitter cold and sweltering humidity, snow, ice, rain, the heat of the midday sun, before the sun rose and after it had set. Each one of those miles was adding to my sense of achievement and any low points were far outweighed by the incredible highs. I was feeling mentally and physically stronger and more and more like I NEEDED to run.

Throughout the year, I was blessed with the unwavering support of Adrian, after all he was taking part in the same challenge as me and we were both spurring each other on to succeed. My family were also aware of what I had taken on and I knew they were proud of me. The more friends I told, the more I felt motivated by their surprise that I had committed to such a huge challenge. It all fuelled my desire to keep going.

So today, following a vacation in the Great Smoky Mountains, I did my final mile of 2017 in a temperature of -11 Celsius (with windchill of -19) on a quiet, snowy road in New York state, making a grand total of 365 runs, 654 miles in distance and 23,829ft of climbing. But why should any of that be of interest to you? I suppose I’m trying to tell you that anyone can do this. You don’t have to be fit, to call yourself a runner or think this is something you have the time to do, you just have to challenge yourself. I certainly didn’t think I could do this, but I’ve proven to myself that I have enough sheer force of will to stop asking IF I can and start asking HOW I can. And now that our MAD challenge is over, what does 2018 hold for me and Adrian? Well I, for one, think I will keep on running because right now, I just can’t think of a good enough reason to stop.