365-0

Today was my 365th consecutive day of running at least 30 minutes. (That’s a year for those of you who are calendarically challenged). It was a perfect day, 40 degrees and not a cloud in the sky.
I didn’t keep track of my mileage, so I don’t really know how far I ran this year. I would guess it is a little over 2000 miles. I had many weeks (November – March) where my mileage was in the low 20’s, but I also had a few weeks around 100 miles and many in the 50-60 mile range.
I guess the numbers don’t really matter since that wasn’t my goal, the real challenge was getting out every day. In many ways that made it easier to do. Knowing that I had to run, meant there was no point in procrastinating. Not that I didn’t procrastinate, there was more than one occasion when I headed out the door at 11:25 pm in order to get my run in. On those occasions I usually just ran for 1:10, that way I could count 1 run for two days .
The hottest temp I ran in was about 85, the coldest temp was -29. I ran in rain, snow, sleet, hail and many, many beautiful days. I’ve literally run at every hour of the day. When I started running I weighed 205 lbs. My current weight is ~180. (the lightest I’ve ever been for an Ironman was 183 (which is also what my weight was when I was a sophomore in high school)) The lightest I got during the big weeks was 172. It’s amazing how much easier running is when you’re skinny (especially when you’re running up a 14′er).
I don’t know that I would recommend running every day if you’re really trying to get faster, sometimes the body needs some recovery. I did some speed work, but most of my runs were at a slow pace and I think living at 10000 feet helped as well. Because of the lack of oxygen, even when I tried to run fast, I wasn’t going very fast, so the pounding on the body was much less than those same efforts would have produced at sea level.