My father taught me that doing something for 21 straight days builds a habit. I had a busy day today, so it took some effort to get my 1 mile of running in this afternoon. I’ve now run for 18 straight days. I’m doing this for a few reasons. From a training perspective, there’s no rational benefit of running every single day. But that isn’t my purpose or my goal. Running has ultimately been my challenge at the end of an ironman. Not a huge challenge, as I usually finish an ironman in about the same place as I’m in when I start my run. My last two races are exceptions based on illnesses and training, but if I’m adequately trained I don’t do too bad on the run. With that said, I want to do better. Since I know I can run long, and mentally I’m good with that, it just seems that getting the idea of running every single day locked into my brain might be helpful. Hence, my daily running streak started 18 days ago. I’ve committed that between now and Kona, I will run at least one mile every day. Today was one of those “test” days.
In running only one mile on a day like today, which for all practical purposes was a rest day for me. Everything I did was light and easy (walking and a little easy spin on the bike). I didn’t want to “just” run one mile, I needed a specific goal and purpose for that mile. I’ve been working on my run cadence, which used to be about 160 foot strikes per minute, and I’ve been trying to increase that number to 170-175. The science behind that has to do with having less time with one’s foot touching the ground. Plus, most elite runners are closer to 180.
I tend to struggle keeping my cadence up when I’m running slow or easy, so today, having only time to run a mile, I focused solely on having more rapid turnover. I succeeded. I ran my mile at about a 9:30 pace, but managed a cadence of 184 foot strikes per minute. My breathing was higher than usual, and if I wore a heart rate monitor, I’m sure my HR would have been higher than what I’m used to when running at this pace. That’s because I was doing something that my body wasn’t used to and was uncomfortable doing. But that was kind of the idea. It’s always good to do things that take you out of your comfort zone, and it takes work to change ones form, which is ultimately necessary if your increasing your cadence at lower paces.
I few years ago, I worked on increasing my cadence and had some success, but my lack of training in the last year really caused me to slip back in to my more slogging habits. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been steadily increasing my cadence closer to 170. Today was the first time I’ve every gone about 180 while running relatively slowly. It will be interesting to see what comes of this.
More importantly, I motivated myself to my 18th straight day of running. Three more days and my habit will officially be locked into place!
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