I left you off in the year 2018. I was a confused middle-aged man who had decided he should run seven miles every day.

Assaulted (May 2018)

After a fairly strong marathon, I decided to take the next month easy. However, when you run every day, you increase your chances of a freak occurrence.

I have a fairly common out-and-back that I run from my house. It involves mostly trail and sidewalk and a nice hill to a bridge over I-25. I was listening to a podcast and zoning out while running on the sidewalk, when all of a sudden I felt a punch the back of the head.

I don’t know a lot of other runners in the area, but there is one that I though maybe would be brazen enough to try to be silly and hit me to catch my attention. But this wasn’t just a slight tap or silly slap, it was a full on mama-said-knock-you-out punch.

I assumed some vagrant was hiding in the nearby bushes and wanted to jump me, so I started running faster before even looking back. I figured that as a runner, my biggest advantage is to outrun this maniac.

I was still a little dazed and confused when I looked behind me and saw my attacker.

It was a goose that had attacked me.

I didn’t see it when I ran past, but it must have been a mother protecting her nest. I saw her massive wings flapping at me so I kept sprinting away laughing to myself.

I ran on the opposite side of the street the next two weeks and never saw her again.

Build Up To 100 Miles (Sep 2018)

After a summer of keeping it casual, I decided I needed a new goal to work towards. It happened when a coworker made a sarcastic comment in the cafeteria, “I noticed you ran an extra tenth of a mile, you’re getting crazy.” She didn’t realize that she unleashed a caged beast. I immediately thought, why not just keep adding a tenth of a mile every day?

So on September 11th, I made the commitment to continue adding a tenth of a mile to each of my runs. I had no exit plan.

The first couple of weeks went by rather easily, but by October 8th I was on track to run at least 10 miles every day. I had to get up earlier and earlier in the morning to get my run done before work. I was getting less and less sleep when I needed more.

I figured out an acceptable stopping point…

A week of half marathons.

Come November 3rd, I ran 12.7 miles. I skipped ahead to a half marathon on the 4th. It was getting colder and darker and I needed the streak to be done.

After a couple of days, I remembered that Strava starts weeks on Mondays and I had started my half marathon streak on a Sunday. I also realized that a week of half marathons would get me very close to a week of 100 miles. I decided that I would make a long run on Sunday and an eighth consecutive half marathon for an official Strava week of 100 miles and 7 half-marathons.

I took my final 21 miles at a nice slow pace. It was time to say goodbye. The streak created a set of interesting Strava monthly charts.

We’ll talk about that second spike in November in my next post.