The Highs and Lows of Running Everyday

The first time I decided to run every day for an entire month (30 days), was back in June 2015, and I clocked 202km for the month, with an average distance covered of 6.73km a day.

Then in September 2018, I decided to do it again, covering a total of 268km with a daily average of 8.93km.

So please tell me why I decided to up the challenge and do it for 100 days straight. Yeah, I don’t know either, I’m just downright crazy.

Is it because I wanted that Smashrun Badge? Pathetic I know.

Like any good challenge, I had to set rules and boundaries.

Goal: 100 days

At first, it was to run 5km every day. That would give me a grand total of 500km over the 100-day period.

While that’s a doable goal, I knew my circumstances would not allow that to happen.

Instead, I set a goal of 15 minutes minimum or 2km. This worked exceptionally well on the days I went to the gym. It meant that I could jump on the treadmill and use that as my warm-up, and still get a quality weight training session in.

Start date: 1st May
End Day: 8th August

Month	Distance	Longest Distance	Average Daily Distance
May	152km	13.4km	4.9km
June	160km	11km	5.3km
July	169km	14.6km	5.45km
August	37km	10km	4.625km
Total	518km	9.8km Average Long Run	5.18km Average Distance

The lows

• Noticing my pace was slowing
• Running hills after leg day at the gym felt really hard
• Just being generally tired
  • Especially the week leading up to my period
• Running on the Treadmill
  • It’s boring and robs you of distance on the watch
• Getting sick on the last few days

The Highs

• Getting back into trail running
• Running on my birthday
• Improvement on endurance
• Finishing

The Lessons

• You need to be organised
  • This meant knowing what workout I was doing each day.
  • Preparing for my day and workout the night before
• Working to a structured plan
• Keep the easy days easy
  • That meant walking when I needed to
• Consistency is key
• Use podcasts, audiobooks or music to motivate you
• Variety is key
  • Dirt road
  • Quiet streets
  • Trails
  • Early morning runs
  • Club runs

Kudos to those people who can run every day, and have running streaks longer than 100 days.

I’ll be honest, setting the intention of “moving every day”, is actually a lot easy to achieve than running every day. It gives me the flexibility to choose what I want to do but more importantly what my body needs.

Will I rerun 100 days? Most likely not, but never say never, who knows what the future holds?

For the time being, I will continue with my Move Everyday & Mobility streak, which currently stands at 964 days (or 2 years, 6 months).