Running 6k everyday for a year

In June this year I completed a year of running atleast 6km every single day without stopping. It all started with a goal of completing 5k run under 25 mins which I had achieved by the end of 2019. There are better approaches to achieve such a goal like including speed runs in your weekly schedule with a rest day, but I stuck to running everyday as I wanted to be disciplined.

While starting this journey I thought doing the same activity everyday will be a challenge as the motivation might die down after a few days or week, but to my surprise the challenge wasn’t motivation but was to run sustainably – which meant that my body should be able to recover well before every run. For recovery one needs to eat well and rest. For me 5.5 to 6.5 hrs of sleep during weekdays and an hour or two more during weekend is enough. Apart from eating well and resting I realised that I needed to include stretching and strength training in my routine for which standing toe-touch, heel raises and some pull-ups were enough.

With these learnings I was able to complete a month of running everyday. After that it became a routine and I only had to plan for the route either when it rained or while travelling to finalise my route.

Rain: Running during rain is liberating, keeping aside the manoeuvring required to avoid water logged parts of road. When it rains just don a raincoat and go for it.

Travel: While travelling I had fix my running route around the place where I had planned to stay (Google maps is so handy for this) and had to carry my phone on the first day of my run to track my location, distance – my fitness-band only tracks distance via step counter unless I carry my phone and enable GPS.

With these experiences I decided to switch up my daily distance from 6km to 8km for about 5 months and later to 10km in the 12th month (yes this includes running during and after the lockdown very early in the morning when literally nobody is around). I discovered that to run 10km everyday I needed atleast 7 to 8 hrs of sleep (this depends from person to person) so I decided to reduce the distance and settled for close to 9 km everyday – current daily distance.

Some of them memorable runs include running in the dark chilly winter mornings while the moon is still up, running in the rain, running on the beach, running 5k in Paris in La Defense (ok it wasn’t that memorable but the walk from Grande Arche to Arc de Triomphe was after the 5k run in the morning – this was 2 months before I started the streak in June ‘19).

So what’s next, yeah nothing much will try to continue the streak till it is sustainable. My fitness band has stopped syncing with my phone so I am not able to track my daily runs post Aug but the streak is still alive so running band free for now and in search for a new one, till then will use my phone (it doesn't track distance but that's ok as daily route is fixed).

For the ones who are thinking to start / restart their runs just go for it when you wake up next.

Daily routes captured when I carried my phone with me while wearing the band below:

Around the lake

On the road when it rains