Back in May and on something of a whim inspired by Covid-related boredom, I decided to participate in the Runner’s World run streak challenge and commit to running at least one mile every day for 40 days. At the time, this seemed daunting: to carve out time to get out the door every single day, at a time when the whole family was stuck at home and thus the demands were never-ending. It also seemed a perfect fit: I needed a reason to get outside and spend a little bit of time alone each day, and it was becoming apparent that the coping mechanisms of comfort food and more wine than usual were not the right approach to a disruption that was going to last more than a couple of weeks.
So, I started running daily. And because I wanted to make it to day 40, I realized I needed to suck it up and actually stretch to avoid injury, something I find very boring and tend to short-circuit. But I did it, and I made it to day 40, then to day 100, and through the end of the year to day 220.
Making running a daily practice has been so good for me. I credit it for saving my sanity more than once in 2020. I was worried it wouldn’t be sustainable, but instead it shifted my thinking about what a run requires. I can wrap up a mile, including minimal dynamic stretching, in about 12 minutes from walking out the door to returning. And while a mile doesn’t give me the exercise I need, making running a daily practice means that I don’t fall out of the habit, so my mileage is almost certainly higher than it would be under any other approach in this phase of life.
As a new year begins, I plan to maintain this practice, add a bit of distance to my minimum—maybe just a quarter mile initially—and hope to hit 1000 miles for the year. I’m not the fastest or the fittest, but I want to keep running for another decade or so. It has been one of the gifts of the great reset of 2020 that running daily has become a default behavior.
Hope Runs On 