I made it 54 days and 321 miles before calling it quits on my longest ever (by far) running streak. What started as an accident – looking at my running calendar and realizing I’d run for ten days straight – became a much larger experiment:
How would my running change if I got rid of rest days?
Before I go into it, let me start at the end. I got tired of running on days when it just didn’t make much sense, and my legs started to feel a bit creaky. Both of those are recipes for disaster, whether the mental injury of not enjoying the runs anymore or the physical injury of not being able to go out and do them. So it felt like a good time, on the 54th day, to throw in the towel.1
What did I learn?
Consistency, consistency, consistency
I thought my running was consistent. But until running every single morning for almost two months, I had no idea how much more consistent it could be. My legs felt fresh and limber. I was much happier sitting inside at a desk all day. Even taking just one rest day a week in the past disrupted that pattern and I really missed the endorphins I knew I needed at the start of each day.
They say that the most important step is waking up, putting on your running clothes and lacing up your shoes, and that was certainly true for me. Every morning, without fail, I knew I’d be running. And the airtight routine of it all made the whole thing a lot easier.
Decisions are the enemy
Consistency eliminates the one thing that is most likely to derail the formation of any habit, whether exercise, eating, or other behaviors: decision-making.
I turned 54 decisions – whether or not to run each morning – into one – should I go on a running streak? Once that first decision was made, there was no question if I was running on a given morning. And only after coming back inside, taking a shower, and giving some thought to how my body was feeling, was I willing to consider giving up on the whole thing.
And giving up becomes much more difficult when you’ve made it that far.
Leave the truly hardcore for the professionals
At a certain point, no amount of discipline, effort, consistency etc… can make up for sucking the joy out of something you love. I knew I had a weekend of bike riding with my dad coming up, and didn’t want to spend the whole time agonizing over how and when to fit in a run. Plus, I’m training for a marathon with a friend and don’t want a stupid injury to sideline me and leave him hanging on race day.
There’s a limit to all of this stuff, and recognizing that a running streak is a powerful tool, while also recognizing that it’s not a sign of weakness to give it up, is an important skill to master. I’m still somewhere in the middle of that journey.
1I technically broke the streak on October 10th, during the Great Saunter. But since that involved 32 miles of walking in one day, I figured that should at least be equivalent to three miles of running, if not more