Broken Streak

Earlier this week (Tuesday) I thought I was going to ditch my target of trying to write an entry for this blog every day. I found myself wondering why I was putting myself under artificial pressure to do something which had little obvious purpose. It has turned out that I have kept going – at least for another 5 days (including this one). But it has also turned out that one of my streaks HAS now been broken. After 8 successful weeks I have not managed to run 25 miles this week. In fact I haven’t even got close.

I knew that my 25 mile per week streak was under threat right at the start of the week. On Monday, out of the blue, I quite suddenly felt achey and ill, like I was in the midst of a nasty flu-ey cold, which was odd because I wasn’t. Consequently, despite feeling much better on Tuesday I decided it would be sensible to forego the short run (4 miles) that was on my training plan for that day. Then, much of the rest of the week was taken out by the cold, windy and snowy weather that came our way from the ‘Beast from the East’ and Storm Emma. it was obvious by Thursday that I was not going to be running 18 miles on Saturday and with no miles in the bag from Wednesday or Thursday (when the bad weather led my running club to cancel its meet for the first time in the 4.5 years I have been a member). I did get out today for 4.1 miles. The snow and ice had all melted and the sun even came out so it was surprisingly warm and fairly nice conditions for running. But one 4.1 mile run does not amount to a 25 mile week, my streak has gone and so the entry in my streak page now shows:

|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|*|_| [0]

representing 8 weeks when the target was achieved (|*|) and a single week when it wasn’t (|_|).

I’m not beating myself up about things – breaking a streak was bound to happen at some point, and now I just need to get back to it and try again.