As I started my run this morning, I realized this run would mark a special milestone in my “running life.” Ever since I got the crazy, out-of-nowhere, idea to run a marathon to celebrate my 26th birthday, I’ve been keeping track of my running mileage in an Excel spreadsheet of my own design.
Every day for the past two-and-a-half years, I have dutifully kept track of my step count, daily mileage and whether or not I ran that day. What began as a simple spreadsheet where I entered my step count, distance and the number of miles I ran that day has morphed in to a wonderfully complex series of worksheets where I track everything from my running miles, shoe mileage, time and pace, daily steps and mileage and training schedule. There are line graphs and bar charts and calculations for my yearly average pace and length per run among several other things.
As of Sunday, after the 10 mile race, I had racked up a total of 2,999 running miles since I started my running life in August of 2005 and this morning’s five-miler would send the odometer over 3,000 miles.
Amazing! To cover 3,000 miles I would have to run from my apartment to my parents’ house in VT and back again almost 3 times! Or, I would have to run from DC to Eureka, California and then run a marathon or three while I was there! Or, I would have to run around Lake Tahoe, 41.5 times!
As I hit the one-mile mark this morning, there was a tiny moment of triumph but then, I just kept running. I kept running because that’s what I do as a long-distance runner. I hit one distance, take a moment or two to reflect and then start to wonder about going a little farther. Three thousand is nice but what about 6,000…10,000…30,000 miles?
I’ll let you know in 22 years how I felt running 30,000 miles…and then I’ll keep running.
Today’s Daily Dozen:
5 mile morning run
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