Amy Lu's View

I am currently NOT in training for anything.

At least not as a runner. I don’t have any races–virtual or IRL–that I am preparing for.

(But yes, I am STILL running. I hope to keep doing so as long as I possibly can and I hope that means I’ll be running yet for many, many years).

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Not being in training means that I can be streaking, because it’s not part of my training plan to take rest days (no running days). It may be recommended that I take rest days (particularly by my husband) but I don’t feel the same inspiration to do so because I don’t need recovery from long runs.

Just to be clear, streaking in the running context does not involve any nudity or novelty songs, (I mean I guess it could but it doesn’t have to) but just running X number of days in a row. The only rule I’m aware of is that you have to run at least a mile for it to count. Often the goal is to reach a certain number of days and there is a shared challenge on a social media.

I had hoped to do a 50 day running streak starting on my birthday to celebrate turning 50, but I developed a mysterious injury or ailment in my thigh and couldn’t run for months. Long story short (and already blogged about repeatedly), I was finally able to start running again and today completed Day 62 of my streak.

There’s no significance to Day 62–today is the just the day that I had time to blog about it. In 62 days I’ve run 296.4 miles. So maybe it would have made more sense to blog about this tomorrow or whenever I pass the 300 mile mark, but again, it’s all about the timing.

Now that I’ve made it past 50 days, I don’t really have a goal in mind for how long I want my streak to be, except for some curiousity about how long I can “reasonably” keep the streak going. (By “reasonably” I mean without going to lengths that are too weird or annoying to Chad).

Since I only have to do a mile a day for it to count, weather and time has been the biggest barrier. I think I should be able to keep my streak going until at least the end of the summer, barring injury (it’s not like I’ll be travelling and not able to run).

Actually, yesterday was a rather significat day since it was the first day of this running season that I ran a mile in under 9 minutes (barely). But I don’t have any requirements for how fast or well I run any of my streaking miles, I just have to do it.

And each day’s run does have its own challenges and meaning, such as “Yay, I got up in time to run before my early morning meeting” or “Yay, I ran even though it was hot and I was hugover and yes, I really should know better but that’s not what this is about…”

Probably the most appealing thing about a running streak is that it’s something to count and observe and a challenge of sorts, but also very flexible. Almost organic. It’s running without a goal or a purpose, besides just to do it. I didn’t even know when I started my streak that I was starting it (metaphor alert!) and I don’t have an end in sight.

So streaking feels significantly different than training in many ways, and there’s not necessarily a goal or purpose to it. But they both share the important commonality of giving me an excuse to take selfies.