Running every day or more commonly referred to as a "streak" has always a niche in the running community that has always been of interest to me. While I have never been one to start a running streak, I started to think about it a bit more after reading the book, The Reading Promise by Alice Ozma.
In the book, what began as a little challenge to read every night consecutively at first for 10 days, turned into 100 and eventually went for 3,218 nights. After reading the book, I remember hearing and reading about Ron Hill, a man who began running ever day in 1964 and set a minimum of 1 mile per day in order for the streak to count. Even after a surgery and hospital stay, he still managed to hobble on a crutch for one mile in order to keep the streak alive. Robert "Raven" Kraft has runs the same 8 mile stretch on a beach in Florida every day since 1975. There is even a webiste dedicated to running streaks over at United States Running Streak Association where many other runners share their stories about running streaks.
What fascinates me about fellow runners who streak is their ability to focus daily on a singular task. It got me to thinking if there were streak runners out there who happen to read this blog or listen to the podcast, I would love to gain a little bit more insight into your thoughts, training, feelings about a streak.
1. Why did you start the streak?
2. What is the minimum amount of mileage and or time that you need to run everyday in order for the day to count?
3. How long is the streak and when might it end?
4. What is the craziest thing that you have done in order to keep the streak alive?
5. How has the streak affected your running (races, times, etc)?
6. What goes into making sure that you get to your streak everyday?
7. How do others who know about your streak view it?
8. What does the streak mean to you?
Please feel free to respond on the blog via a comment or via email @ dirtdawg50k@aol.com
Ramblings from a runner on this blue bubble.
5 comments:
I've 'streaked' a few times over the years, the most recent being running for a min of an hour (in one go) every day during Feb '10. The most recent was before xmas when I ran every day for 50 days.
Here are my answers
1. to kick start some consistent training
2. 3 miles is the minimum
3. 50 days, and I'm aiming to run every day this year - but taking it one run at a time.
4. um...I had a minor asthma attack in the first half mile of a run during a streak once, took a couple of puffs of my inhaler and then carried on.
5. after the streak in Feb '10 I went on to post pb's at 5k, 10k, and half mara.
6. I need a routine. Run first thing when the kids have left for School otherwise life gets in the way
7. Hubs and kids think I'm beyond help, especially when they see me going out into gale force winds and snow/ice.
8. the streak is an obsession and I think a lot of runners have obsessive compulsive natures therefore I'm feeding my monster.
sorry, the beginning of my comment doesn't make sense - that's the effect 'streaking' has on you...beware!
Mike, see your Carve Out Time post, I left some comments there in November. My streak is relatively new and my own comments on why are on my blog at http://csuramfan.blogspot.com/2011/11/streaking.html. In that post I link to some comments my buddy Pete made on Streaking, I think they sum up the why for me pretty well.
1. I started the Streaking because I was in a running rut, meaning I wasn't running very much. The rut was due to a lot of things, but mostly because I wasn't carving out the time I needed to and making excuses to not run.
2. I set the bar low, at the 1 mile a day that the US Running streak Association sets. (runeveryday.com) Several friends of mine do 20 or 30 minutes a day. I am almost always at least 20-25 minutes, but I wanted to make sure that on that low motivation day I would still get out there. 1 mile or 10 minutes isn't really that daunting, 30 minutes sometimes is.
3. My run to work this morning was day 74. I don't plan on stopping right now. Originally I only committed to the end of 2011 but I've enjoyed it too much.
4. I haven't done anything crazy to perpetuate it yet. I'm sure the day is coming. I've really only had 1 day so far that I really didn't want to go.
5. I slacked big time in Sept and Oct and lost a lot of speed -- like 3 minutes off my 5K time. Since I started the streak the consistency has me back to within 30 seconds or so of that PR. I also had my biggest month of running mileage ever in December even though I didn't do any crazy long runs - it was just the consistency of gettting out there every day.
6. The best part of the streak is that I never have to decide if I'm going to run, only when. I think of this every day, often the day(s) before. This starts me thinking of my entire day, not just the run, and my entire life is better organized and scheduled now.
7. I'm an ultrarunner - people knew I was a little nuts with running before I started Streaking. I don't think much has changed there.
8. The Streak to me is really a sign of committment to scheduling my life successfully. I've been good at times, bad at other times, in doing this. Sometimes running slid, sometimes it was something else. Oddly by running more often, every day, I need to be sure and think about everything else too, so that running doesn't take over.
I've learned more about what easy days are through the Streak too, as you need to take some easy days. My training is similar to what it used to be (except I don't skip anything ;) and my 2 days of rest from before are now short easy runs. I have found I am more durable than I thought as other than some aches here and there I haven't been injured at all.
This might be longer than your post, sorry.
Another requirement of my streak is do run outdoors. I hate the treadmill though so this really isn't a burden.
Before the streak I'm on now, I never really worried to much about streaks. But late in the fall, I could feel the possibility approaching that I would miss a bunch of running unless I could motivate myself until my Boston training started. So I decided to announce that I was doing a 100 day streak. Not long by streaking standards, but really long for me. Two miles is my minimum and I've only done that little twice. The streak worked! I'm on day 86, Boston training has started and I think I may be in the best shape ever at the start of a marathon cycle. The streak, in and of itself, doesn't mean much to me, only how it benefits my running is important.
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