What constitutes the end of a running streak?

Since April 2020, I’ve run at least one mile every day. In the beginning for me this meant 4-5 miles/day. As I’ve gotten more and more pregnant, and bigger and bigger, I told myself to “just run one mile.” Then after that, I would walk/run the rest. But as if this week (Day 412), my “just run one mile” turned into “can you walk/run one mile”? And that’s when I wondered – is my streak over? Does a walk/run count for a streak?

If a walk/run counts, I’m still streaking.

If it’s running without stopping, then day 411 was my last day.

I know I have been saying this for a few weeks now, but I’m slowing down when it comes to running.

At 33 weeks pregnant now, running is not so comfortable. While my weight is the same, I’m bigger during this pregnancy than my last one – at least in terms of the size of my bump – which means many runs feel like I’ve just ate a full Thanksgiving meal, have already run up 7 flights of steps and also have a full bladder. I’m so full and out of breath, even though my heart rate isn’t up!

With LM, I ran a 10k and 5k the WEEK she was born. The Cleveland Marathon weekend was the weekend before I gave birth (and was 39 weeks during the races), so I somehow managed to do those races. But, I didn’t run too much up to that – just 1-2 days a week. So I’m hopeful to keep that up, even if that means my streak is ending soon.

Not a running photo, but seen on a walk this week — so many turtles!

After a few weeks of beautiful weather in Cleveland, it seems that monsoon season has hit. Each day this week, I woke up to rain or clear skies that turned into rain, which also turned into chilly weather. While we did have one day of 60 and rain (which I don’t mind as much), most of the rest of it was 40 and rainy, which is probably my least favorite running weather (besides ice).

But, the streak goes on and I was able to get in runs every day, including my BEST RUN in months, thanks to the help of my husband. More to come on that.

After I hit my 1-year running streak last week, I honestly wasn’t sure how long I would continue to run every day. I know it’s not going to be until this baby is born (I’m 28 weeks pregnant), but I decided to keep it up this week.

Truthfully, it was easy. After being in New York over the weekend, running in Cleveland Monday through Wednesday wasn’t difficult. And then, we decided to take a short trip to Holmes County, Ohio – or Amish Country – which provided me another great change of scenery – including lots of FLAT land – making it easy to keep the streak up.

So I’m still streaking, this time on vacation, AND I even got in a few runs with my 4-year-old who ran his first mile this week! I’m so proud of him and he even helped me keep on moving. I know he would’ve gone faster if I wasn’t slowing him down these days!

I DID IT! 

The week, I hit my 365th day of running in a row – I made it to one year! It wasn’t an easy feat, but at the same time, I can’t believe it came so fast.

if you’re a numbers nerd like me, you may appreciate the stats –

• Days run in a row: 365
• Weeks pregnant (Currently) 27 – this means I’ve run about half of the running streak pregnant!
• Average run length: about 5.5 miles
• Shortest run: 2 miles
• Longest run: 13.1 (I did last year’s Cleveland half marathon as part of the streak)
• Total mileage: about 2,002 miles

I can honestly say that I didn’t set out to run every day for a year. In fact, I didn’t start with the intent of doing a running streak. I don’t even remember at what day that I realized I had started streaking. I do remember at day 100 thinking, wow, this is cool! Even at day 200 I didn’t have my sights set on 365. But as the day got closer and closer, I thought, “What if?”