January

The challenge: 365 days of running

One New Year's Eve, I saw an Instagram post by my friend Tony Vert. He was looking back on his year and saying how great it was to run every day. Now that was my kind of hero: a regular guy with a business and a family, not some mythical creature in a sports magazine. And he had managed to run every single day, no excuses. Hardcore! I wanted to do that too.

The next morning, on New Year's Day, I started my own challenge: 365 days of running. I hadn't thought it through. I read a post one evening and went for a run the next morning. I already had the shoes, after all.

I ran every day that year. Not every run was worth bragging about. I got sick a couple of times, and running with a fever was hardly comfortable, so some runs were just 300 to 600 meters. A technicality, obviously. But the streak remained intact.

Once, on a day-long trip, I spent my layover running back and forth outside the airport in Amsterdam. No running shoes, just heavy hiking boots. I was ridiculously slow. But the streak was still alive!

That September I ran a city marathon in under four hours. My legs hurt like hell. I could barely walk or climb stairs, so running the next day seemed almost unimaginable. For several days I covered tiny distances again. The important thing, to me, was that I kept going.

By December, I was wrung out. I'd had enough. I'd achieved everything I wanted to achieve that year, and now I was doing tiny runs, some barely worth the name, just to finish the challenge.

And I did. On December 31 I recorded a video about running for 365 days and being utterly exhausted. It got plenty of likes. Then I went to Instagram to thank Tony for motivating and inspiring me.

I found that original post. And that New Year's Eve, I finally read it all the way to the end.

It turned out he had SET A GOAL for the year: a mileage target to reach over those 365 days. Not a promise to run every day!

Tony had started his challenge with a "goal-setting kilometer" on New Year's Day. He'd thought things over, set himself a mileage goal for the year, and met it, but on far fewer than 365 running days. There had been colds, office parties, fatigue, and all the usual things nobody ever sees coming. Reasons, in other words. But he'd covered every kilometer he'd promised himself.

You should have seen my face.

On the other hand, I'm glad I never finished reading that post. I spent the whole year happily imagining I was following his example. Making an exception never felt like an option. Running every day soon became part of my routine. The next morning, on New Year's Day, it was genuinely hard not to go out. I had to make myself stay home. Imagine that: sometimes it takes willpower not to run.

Whatever else happened, that first challenge taught me something. I knew I could run every day. Literally.

A marathoner's watch

The following Christmas, my wife surprised me with a Garmin Forerunner. Nothing top-of-the-line, just a solid sports watch that could tell me all sorts of things about the wonders happening inside my magnificent body.

Unlike the Apple Watch I owned at the time, it didn't run out of battery by evening. It lasted three or four days, which meant I could sleep in it and track my sleep. That won me over.

I'd run with an Apple Watch before, but checking my heart rate on the move was awkward, so mostly I didn't bother. In hindsight, I wish I had.

Now I could track my heart rate, how well I recovered overnight, and my stress level. The watch also gave me detailed running stats. I was turning into my own favorite research project.

As soon as I put it on, I thought: right, perhaps I can run every day again.

I'd kept running during the year after that first challenge, but nowhere near as regularly. During the challenge, I'd covered 1,600 km. The following year I managed only 577 km over ninety runs. Ninety runs in an entire year! My results suffered too: my marathon time slipped from 3:56 to 4:12. It was a struggle. I pushed and pushed and still finished slower.

And, honestly, I missed running. Getting back to the 365 Challenge felt good. A big goal gave me something to get excited about. With the new watch, I decided to try another year of daily running. This time, perhaps, I'd know what I was doing.

Consistency

The biggest surprise was what running every day did for me. It's probably the part of this book people will argue with most.

Running articles constantly stress the need for breaks and recovery. There's no arguing with that. The body needs rest, and ignoring that fact can damage your health. Even champions take rest days. Especially champions.

But we all have to play the hand we were dealt. I know myself. I'm a little lazy and not terribly organized. Give me a chance to skip a workout and I'll make a very convincing case for it. Could I move it to tomorrow? Take a little extra rest this week, or next? Get confused about the schedule? I can always find a reason to wriggle out of it.

When I was younger, I repeatedly tried getting up early to exercise, study a language, or work. I'd solemnly promise myself: tomorrow I'll wake up fresh and full of energy. I'll be the very picture of willpower. I'll lose weight, get flexible and strong, go for a run, do pull-ups, start the day in the park...

Then the alarm went off at six. My brain woke up and supplied some perfectly sensible objections. I had actually gone to bed quite late. Eight hours of sleep is good for you. I didn't need that workout so desperately; I was in decent shape already. I could exercise in the evening. Besides, Monday is a better day to start. I was like Phil Connors in Groundhog Day, waking up to the same morning and making the same bad choices. My version had fewer groundhogs and more snoozing.

Reason won. Willpower never stood a chance. Apparently I was far too rational to get out of bed.

I also know I'm exceptionally stubborn. In the 365 Challenge, missing one workout would mean failing the whole project. But there was no rule saying I had to run 10 km, get up early, or run fast. I could run slowly, briefly, at any time of day. The point was consistency.

My reasoning was that I could always find ten minutes, short of breaking a leg. In that stubborn frame of mind, even a broken arm seemed more like a reason to slow down than to stop. I had already completed one year of daily running, so I believed I could do it again. Time had softened the unpleasant memories; all I remembered was the fun. And at a party I could casually drop, "I run every day." What a guy!

That was my solution to consistency: run every day. Not every day would make me proud, but if someone asked which days I ran, I'd have an easy answer. Every day. Pick any day of the year.

How simple is that schedule?

The simplest schedule imaginable. Impossible to forget or mix up.

It. Is. So. Simple.

Really.

The first month

Experienced runners really believe running is easy, almost the simplest, most accessible sport there is. All you need is a pair of shoes and some workout clothes, and off you go. Everyone has those! You don't need a gym full of weights, a coach, an ice rink, a golf course, a soccer field, or a volleyball court. You don't even need a partner, as you do in tennis. And it's free!

You can run alone in a park or along the streets, in any town, on any surface, at any time. Serious performance takes equipment, specialized shoes, and coaching, of course. But running for pleasure doesn't take any of that. Experienced runners believe this wholeheartedly. Put them on a lie detector and they would probably pass.

It sounds good. It's also not quite true.

Those runners have already started, and they love their sport. Most other people hate running because it gives them no pleasure whatsoever. Their muscles ache. They gasp for breath and get blisters. They're sweaty, smelly, humiliated by their pace, and appalled by their lack of stamina. Those cheerful experienced runners are intensely irritating. After a few episodes of suffering and humiliation, running gets crossed off the list until the next attempt.

That makes perfect sense too.

Running is hard work. That first run can be much tougher than your first workout with dumbbells. You're asking your body to do something unfamiliar, and it can't keep up yet. No wonder you're out of breath, sore, and not enjoying a second of it.

But I knew things could change. Enjoyment would come, along with the thrill of achieving something. For now, all I needed was consistency. No heroics. Just keep showing up.

Even with quite a bit of running behind me, getting back into a regular routine was hard. The difference was that I knew the discomfort was temporary. I expected those unpleasant feelings to pass. All of them.

I started with 2 or 3 km, often walking part of the way, at a thoroughly unimpressive average pace. My muscles hurt. From day one, the voice in my head whispered that this was a stupid idea. Surely I could run well without running daily? Surely I could take a little break?

I brushed those thoughts aside. I had known they would come, and I knew I could handle them. Little by little I settled into the habit and felt able to run farther and longer.

To coach or not to coach

A coach should help. My own track record hasn't been great, though. Whether I tried strength training or yoga, sessions with an instructor tended to lead fairly quickly to an injury and a long recovery. I'll admit that left me a little biased.

Perhaps I expected too much of a coach. It's easy to assume that if someone else sets the workout, they're responsible for how it goes. But it's still my body doing the work. I can't hand that part over. It's like trying to learn to drive by watching the instructor instead of taking the wheel.

Some of my friends work with coaches and love having someone to motivate them, answer questions, and set goals. Personally, I find myself arguing with the advice too often. I want to listen to my body, analyze my results, and read training articles, blogs, and books so I understand what I'm doing.

My friends usually work with their coaches online. For a modest fee, someone who knows running writes a training plan, tracks their progress through an app or Garmin Connect, and answers questions. When you have no one else to share your running troubles or triumphs with, your coach is there to listen and help. Besides, once you've promised your coach something, you don't want to let them down. You make the effort.

As a textbook introvert, I manage without one.

There are plenty of apps, and I prefer those, though I don't always obey them either. They provide a framework, which is enough for me. The same goes for yoga, gym workouts, nutrition, breathing exercises, and the rest. A framework is all I need.

A training plan

I had no coach, so no one was going to write my training plan. I didn't know how to write one myself, and saw no point in inventing a meaningless schedule. I'd probably fail to follow it anyway. Why pretend?

For the first month of my running year, I focused on showing up and logging my runs. I had no training plan, but I was building a habit, which wasn't a bad start. I could worry about pace, distance, results, and how each run felt later. First I had to get out the door.

People say you have to repeat something twenty-one times to make it a habit. Perhaps. It was a useful idea to believe in. Either way, if I kept doing it every day, a habit would eventually emerge.

Alongside the daily runs, I weighed myself and recorded the result every morning. That last part matters. I really did step on the scale every single morning. As with running, I had no carefully defined weight-loss target. I was simply keeping a record.

The difference between Monday and Tuesday was tiny, practically invisible. But the act of recording it created a habit and brought my weight into focus. I wasn't actively doing anything about it; I was paying attention. Writing it down. The weight did change. It just took a couple of months.

Apps

My main running app was NRC, Nike Run Club. It connected me to a huge running community, where I could find people I knew and compare our achievements in weekly and monthly friend rankings. My feed included people from Germany, the United States, Japan, Mexico, and Brazil. It was fun to finish an early run and find myself in the lead. As runners in other time zones finished their workouts, they caught up or overtook me. Sometimes I was tempted to squeeze in an evening run just to hold my place.

I usually made the weekly or monthly top ten. During my running year, I was often first. Since I didn't know most of these people personally, I could add or remove them without much guilt. I chose a group whose weekly totals were close to mine. Someone impossibly far ahead is discouraging. Someone far behind lets you feel superior, but beating a much weaker runner does little for your progress. The best people to follow are runners you can catch if you put in the work.

The app offered challenges such as running 50 or 100 km by a certain date, as well as virtual charity runs. On one occasion Nike promised a donation based on the distance people ran on a particular day. Naturally, I tried to run farther.

I could create distance challenges of my own and choose audio-guided runs with well-known guests. I enjoyed it. Nike Run Club seemed to offer fewer statistics than Strava, adidas Running, Garmin, Under Armour, and some other apps. But it gave me enough, and the Nike community felt like mine. As the saying goes, “If it’s not on Strava, it didn’t happen.” My legs have a different opinion.

I also liked the virtual Sunday 5K, Just Do It on Sunday, and the special running events. The app had training tips, plans, nutrition advice, and other encouraging little nudges.

There was a Nike feed for sharing running photos, complete with attractive Nike stickers. My own running diary.

After a run, I could see my route on a map and use the calendar to look back fondly at earlier runs: where I'd been and how far I'd gone. I could record treadmill runs too. I hadn't always trusted the distance estimates, but they'd become more reliable over time.

NRC also gave me achievement badges: little rewards for particular occasions or accomplishments. A New Year's run, my birthday, Lunar New Year, Valentine's Day, or Cinco de Mayo, for example.

I could earn badges for training three, five, or seven times a week, or for covering more than 50 or 100 km. NRC kept telling me how well I was doing. I have to admit, I liked it.

Running every day gave me a good shot at collecting the whole year's set.