The 100 Days Challenge

It started out innocently enough. I started running on New Year's Eve - then started running with my husband, who decided he wanted to run every day to get back into shape. I wanted to join him mostly because I like running together and, as I found in those first couple of weeks, it was a great time to touch base and catch up on what was going on.

But I had never run more than 3 or 4 days in a row without a rest day. This would be a new challenge! I would start with running shorter runs and see where it goes from there.

A few days into our challenge I saw a Facebook post by John Bingham of the 100 Days Challenge. That sounded like a fun challenge to join - a goal to see just how far I could take my everyday running. After a week or so, my husband became ill and had to stop running - but I kept going. I even replaced 2 runs with 2 mile power walks on days when I was too tired or my husband's legs hurt too much - but outside of those two days - I have RUN every day in January. I have completed day 30 of the 100 Day Challenge - with my New Year's Eve run I have run 31 days in a row.

So, 1/3 into this challenge I have learned a few things:

- miles accumulate quickly when running every day. Even though my runs are shorter, and my long runs have been under 10 miles (except the Disney Half) I will break 120 miles for January. I usually never break 100 miles in a month unless I am in the height of training for a marathon with 20+ milers built in to the mix.

- it is VERY hard to miss a day. There were a few days I would have quickly bagged a run because of schedule conflicts - but I have stuck to these runs even if my run took place at 9 pm and I did it by running 3 laps around the block. I feel determined not to miss any runs until I complete the challenge.

- the best part of my run is logging it and crossing off another day in the challenge.



Next race

My next race is the Winter Park Road Race, a 10K race run toward the end of March. Last year I ran a PR, completing the race in 1:01:25. At this time last year I was running faster than I am now, but I am hoping to use February to begin to build my speed back up. Who knows, maybe I can PR again this year! :-)