A run-streak of 1275 days

*Bonus analysis on running data at the end

1275 days are about 3 and half years, it started with me trying to complete a month of running everyday and later it felt like I can continue just like that and was lucky enough to keep at it without skipping a single day. It is like brushing your teeth every morning which you can easily continue if you want to.

The why of this running streak was/is to stay fit and I agree there are other ways to achieve it but I chose this way as I generally find it easier to stick to a schedule and get it done as conveniently as possible.

Yearly breakdown:

• In the first year I ran 6km everyday transitioned to 8km in the last 3 months
• In the second year increased my daily distance to 9km and transitioned to atleast 10 km for last 9 months. By the end of the year I also realised that it is not worth to commit to running atleast 'x' km everyday as I had to commit to the distance even during vacations, I don't regret it but won't recommend or enforce such constraints on myself going forward.
• In the third year I decided to just stick to running everyday without any minimum distance limit with which I was able to run about 5km everyday

Few of the other reasons to continue the run streak was to test some hypotheses like:

• Just running everyday will continually increase one's pace: Nopes (not without incorporating interval runs, rest days and heart rate trainings)
• Just running everyday will make you extremely fit: Nopes (not without focusing on other exercises and diet, and it won't help in spot-reducing lower belly fat)

Three of the most important pointers that helped me in sustaining everyday runs are:

1. Stretching before and after the runs (avoid this and it is highly likely that you'll get injured in your first week/month of running everyday)
2. Sleeping for atleast 6-7 hours a day (this is a positive feedback loop, you sleep better so you run better and so on)
3. Controlled running pace (meaning avoiding the temptation of sprinting during each run)

My longest run is about 20km (yet to complete a half marathon) and the fastest pace for 10k is 4.32 mins per km (a total run time of 45.05 mins). Will try to improve the pace upon this in 2023. Currently planning on continuing the streak till I am unable to run atleast 2-3 km on a day, so less likely but I won't regret stopping the streak if I have to.

How can I forget to list the benefits experienced as a result of running regularly (some from my previous articles):

• That amazing feeling after completing every run (this top the list easily)
• Better sleep cycles
• Relatively healthier eating habits
• Higher metabolism rate for those who don't have it innately

I hope this article helps to push anyone who is holding on to running regularly due to whatever reasons. Yeah stop waiting for that elusive Monday which falls on the 1st of a month.

My Strava profile link is in comments, in case you want to check out.

Basic analysis of my running data

This analysis is performed using data captured with Garmin watch for two years ('21 and '22). No such rich data for analysis is available for initial 1.5 years of running as it was captured using MI band and my phone.

Data cleaning and transformation is done using Python Pandas and Numpy and plotting with Seaborn.

Quarterly metrics in tabular format

Pace (minutes per kilometer - lower the better) is a metric to measure how fast your runs are - speed_kmph is provided for reference. In 2021 my pace became slower as the year progressed stating that running long distances everyday is detrimental. My 5k runs are generally faster than 10k and have improved and remained stable at a faster pace as the year progressed in 2022.

Cadence is a measure of steps taken per minute (higher the better). Ideal cadence is recommended as 180 spm and looking at my cadence I can try to improve it by incorporating more interval-runs I guess. A strange observation is that it is decreasing over the time

Visualising spread of speed across quarters

Box and whisker plot to visualise variation in speed across quarters. Variation of speed in Q1 of both 2021 and 2022 is higher as compared to later quarters, I guess it can be attributed to shift in running distance at the start of the year. The outliers at the top are those where I had deliberately run much faster and the ones at the bottom are those where I had run very slow (most probably when I didn't get enough rest) as compared to my usual runs.

Visualising relation between speed, heart-rate and cadence across year months

My heart-rate varies closely with speed as expected whereas cadence (steps per minute) was initially varying closely with both, but deviated later and has a decreasing trend.

Heart rate zone distribution across quarters

This is a proxy indicator about how intense a run is using one's target heart rate. Target heart rate is an estimate that can be calculated using one's age. Your runs can be categorised under different buckets by comparing your average heart rate v/s target heart rate. ZONE-5 runs are maximum effort runs and ZONE-1 runs are recovery runs.

Based on chart below most of my runs fall under ZONE-4 and I can try to increase my easy runs.

Speed v/s time of the day: Shows that my runs between 7 to 9 am are relatively faster

Speed v/s time of the day - swarm plot overlay: Shows that most of my runs are between 6 to 7 am.

Thanks for reading till the end. Kindly excuse / suggest corrections if there are any mistakes in the analysis.