October 30, 2020, marks my 2000 day of running at least 6 miles.

I run slower than before.

At the start of 2021, I started to improve my flexibility. Unfortunately, that stretching turned into a damaged right hamstring and left oblique. For the next seven months, I could not comfortably push myself. I was seeing 10-minute miles even after stepping down to 8 mile days.

I put all of my running goals behind the true ideal of not being injured. As I looked online for how to heal my pain, most results just suggested rest. As I refused to stop running, I instead chose to go slow. An injury that would probably have healed up in weeks now took months.

Every State

As my son and I traveled across the country, we realized that our daily runs had created a new goal, run in every state in America.

It started with the wild idea of detouring three hours to run in New Hampshire and Vermont. It has continued with staying the night in Berea, KY, instead of Knoxville, TN.

We both still have a good number of states to go. There are no sports teams in Alaska, the Dakotas, or Wyoming. We’ve also never seen a purpose to visit Nebraska.

However, it has made me think about making a simple website that connects to the Strava API to show you which states you’ve traveled in and which remain. It could be a great project to get my son’s feet wet in computer science.

What Remains?

I’ll continue to say that I had no idea I would be running this long.

A marathon is coming up in April, but I need to keep grinding out eight miles every day while on the Epic Field Trip.

As the baseball playoffs continue, I think about Cal Ripken playing 2632 straight games for the Orioles.

I would have to run for another two years to beat an arbitrary number from a different sport, but sometimes you make up your own goals to give your life meaning.

Who knows what happens in 2022, but with 2000 runs done, it’s all gravy from here.