How a person defines themselves is an interesting thing. What do we think of when a person comes to mind. Who are they? What do they do that's interesting or different from the herd? Running is how I've come to define myself. As a young teen I can remember thinking that that was how I wanted to be remembered. I've put together a crazy streak of running the last 19 plus years. How does a person do that? 2.86 miles a day for 6984 days straight? How does that happen? It seems impossible! A big chunk of life and living have passed by during those years. I really haven't taken particularly good care of myself. I've eaten a ton of fast food, drank an unbelievable amount of beer. Surgeries, my parents getting sick and then the long grieving process afterwards. Lots and lots of little niggling injuries along the way that needed to be figured out without missing too many miles. Lots and lots of water and very little soda have been a big positive. But my running diary (now blog) has been my conscience and a voice of reason. I've always had that to answer to. That voice saying, "you've got to get out there and get some miles logged down".
When I started running I can remember thinking that "this thing could get out of hand". With the way my mind works I knew that if I began writing it down in a running diary that I'd be tied closely to it. Sure enough that's exactly what's happened. There was never a particular time or long term mileage goal in the early years. It was just getting each run documented. It was a simple way to track the mileage on my shoes and have a reference to look back at. The early years were the high mileage years. I'm glad I had those in the bank because until last year I'd only made the "minimum" 20 mile weeks in 3 of the previous 10 years. 4 of those years were really close so they didn't hurt the overall average too badly. I must have been 6-7 years in when I took the time to see what my average weekly miles were. It was at that time that I thought maintaining 20 mile weeks for a long time would be a cool number. Now that I've made it to the 20,000 mile point it's time to look ahead to the next goal. I'm 10 months and some days shy of 20 consecutive years of 20 mile weeks.
Having a very supportive and understanding wife has been hugely helpful. If I'd had a wife that made a big deal of my getting up super early on Saturday mornings to head out in the woods for hours on end there's no way I'd be where I am with this streak. She realized right away how happy it made me and has never given me any grief at all about how high I prioritize my running. Along the way I've made some excellent running friends too. There are a particular few that I'm close with that have achieved some astounding things. I've had those friends to look up to and to try to emulate.
I have to give some credit to the city we live in too. Austin has a very active feel to it not to mention plenty of places to get your run on. Townlake downtown, Barton Creek and Bull Creek. All wonderful places to run with lots of options for long mileage or whatever suits you that day.
For years all things seemed possible. Nowadays that doesn't always seem to be the case. Sometimes now I feel like I'm just holding on. I've got some physical issues I can't seem to get past that are holding me back from going very long anymore. I haven't given up hope though. I have a few ultra races on my radar. I do wonder though, if I'm at the point where I need to forget about doing anymore long races and risk injury, or just focus on maintaining 90 mile months and making sure I get my 20 for 20 and beyond.....
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