On 11 September 2016, I accidentally committed to running and blogging every day, with no end date. (You can read how it happened here, but basically, it was all Seth Godin’s fault.)
Yesterday, I completed a full year of running and blogging every day.
It wasn’t a very good run, to be honest: I’ve had a horrible virus for the last few days and my runs have been short (little more than the mimimum 1 mile), slow, snotty and drizzly. So not quite the big milestone event I’d envisaged.
And today, for the first time in a year, I’m not going for a run. The streak ends here.
Why?
Partly because I lost the joy somewhere along the way. The obligation of running every day was a great way to make myself do it, but it also somehow sucked the joy out of it towards the end.
Partly because I discovered that I was increasingly just doing the bare minimum mile and no more: I’ve ended up doing a very similar mileage to years when I wasn’t running every day, simply because I’ve not been doing the longer runs.
And partly because I found I need end points: I need races in the diary, landmarks that get bigger as I approach them and then recede in the rear-view mirror, which I can tick off as I pass them and look for a new one, not just a relentless unchanging ongoing commitment. (Maybe there’s a way to combine those, for the future.)
I’m aware this sounds quite downbeat, which is interesting (and probably reflects the fact that I’m still feeling a bit grotty).
In fact it’s been a fasincating, rich experience and I’m SO glad I’ve done it. Tomorrow, in order that the universe be kept in balance, I’ll write a post about all the great things I discovered from my 365-day streak.
(And have you noticed, I’m still blogging? More on that soon, too…)