The Streak Goes On

Today will be day 27 of my walk/run streak.  To recap quickly, I’m committed to walking and/or running a mile or more every day through at least the end of August.  It’s like a running streak, but allows walking in the hopes of avoiding burnout and injury.

And it turns out that walking can be harder than running, particularly on the day after a hard workout.  Running produces a biochemical stew including adrenaline and endorphins that dull pain and tap into energy reserves.  Walking isn’t intense enough to do that, so there’s nothing to stop the sensations of dragging a tired, achy body around.

But walking is enough to loosen up the body and get things circulating, which flushes out waste and gets nutrients into areas that aren’t well served by blood vessels.  It’s restorative without doing further damage.  Other activities such as Yoga are also helpful, but since I can’t track mileage when doing Yoga, I go for a walk.

With a few walk days during the week, there’s now more contrast between my hard and easy workouts.  This seems to be working very well, but since I’m still coming back from injury and bronchitis it’s too soon to tell if it’s the walking or simply my body remembering some of its former level of fitness.  Either way, my pace has improved from glacial to slow at an astounding rate and my resting pulse is back under 60.

By doing something every day, the weekly mileage adds up very quickly.  I’m eager to get back to doing a long run over 10 miles once a week, but right now that would ramp up my weekly mileage too much too quickly.  It’s a completely different experience to be holding back on pace and distance compared to trying to go further and faster than the body is really ready for.  Exercise is fun again.

The streak is almost a month long and becoming established as habit.  Now it’s time to start focusing on adding in some strength training and maybe even some yoga, in addition to maintaining the streak.  Adding variety instead of increasing mileage feels radical.  It’s not something a runner does naturally.