The rules of the USRSA require that anyone wanting to establish a streaking record must run at least one mile, unassisted, every single day. The current leader in this competition is Jon Sutherland, a 63-year-old runner from West Hills, California, who has run a total of 16,306 days (44.64 years). Now that is an impressive stretch of time, and one which I might be approaching had I begun running while still in college, at the tender age of 20 (about the time Jon began) and never missed a day. Alas, my misspent youth did not even consider such an ambition, and if you had told me when I was 20 that I would be a 64-year-old runner who has completed 19 marathons, I would have looked at you as if you were a lunatic.
These days I can appreciate that record more than I could when I was living the wild life of a college student in Central Florida in 1969. I am a little obsessive about some things, after all. I have practiced my daily Tai Chi every morning, if I am not mistaken, for nearly 20 years, and since the summer of 2010 more often than not on the new deck I built. But when it is pouring rain, or too slick to stand, or when I am on vacation, I can practice Tai Chi in a living room or a motel room or a parking lot.
But although I do not like to miss more than two days of running, I do not feel compelled to run every single day. After a hard run, I think it is good to take a day off, and I used to take a solid week off after a marathon. That rest day in the midst of marathon training is especially welcome, beckoning like an oasis at the end of a long week of intervals and tempo runs and 20-,milers!
And when it comes to writing this blog, it is the same. I do not intend to write every day. But, like running, I am coming to feel that I don't like to take too much time off between posts. It keeps me fit. It gives me the opportunity to think and to reflect, and to enjoy that elemental pleasure of placing one word after another, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph.
No comments:
Post a Comment