Chipping Away… towards 1000 miles

Several months ago, back in the dim and distant days of late summer, when I was running lots and nothing like as busy with work as I have been this past 12 weeks, I signed myself up for a virtual challenge of completing 1000 miles in the year. This simply involved paying out £12.95 (I think) to a company who would send me a nice shiny medal once I sent in proof that I had completed 1000 miles of running during 2020. At the time it seemed pretty easy – I was well on track and completing the mileage from my (then) current position wasn’t that big a deal.

Then I got busy with work. Really busy.

The last 12 weeks are by far my busiest period of the academic year and on top of lots of lectures, marking and general (virtual) interactions with students I’ve had the pleasure of ongoing work sorting out the timetable for February onwards – something which is usually done in the summer. So my running suffered a bit – not to the extent that I crashed out of it altogether – but enough that about 6 weeks ago I realised that if I wanted that 1000 mile medal I had better start putting on my running shoes and getting out a bit more often. Since then, I have been working on an average daily mileage of close to 3 miles and that has meant grabbing every opportunity to pound the streets that I can. No, what I mean is that it has meant me dragging myself out of the house a lot more than my naturally lazy-arsed instinct would want. But it has worked. I now find myself with 17 days to go needing to run about 2.6 miles per day and the final target is very much within reach. I think only a bad cold will scupper things now although it should be acknowledged that a bad cold is exactly what I usually get the moment that this particular term finishes (so it’s scheduled for Friday later this week…). I’ve also upped the ante by forking out for another rather nice wooden ‘medal’ which I will award myself for running at least a kilometre every day in the 24 days running up to Christmas Day itself. No pressure (well, only self-inflicted pressure I guess).

Today, I had a plan to work through to about now and then go out for a pleasant 4-5 miles but here I am writing this and putting it off. I look out of the window and it’s completely dark (at 4:50pm). I can feel that it’s cold – not freezing cold but cold enough to make the prospect of going outside not entirely pleasant. At least it is not currently raining, although there are some pretty dark clouds out there and there have been some heavy showers. So I sit here typing instead.

No, no, NO. IT WON’T DO… Stop writing, switch off the computer, get off the chair, get changed and get out there. There are miles to be run and they won’t run themselves. You just have to keep chipping away. Always.