In December 2021, I set myself the challenge of doing exercise every day of the year in 2022. A friend of mine had done it the year before and was, quite frankly, in the shape of his life. With five marathons and one ultra-marathon planned, I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to get very fit and stay very fit, so that when the next event came around, I just had to stay injury-free and stay the course.
My friend did warn me that there would be times when I'd forget to do something and I'd have to lace up my shoes and go for a run at 10.30/11 at night, but I was determined to stay on top of it and set myself some very basic rules to abide by:
it had to be logged to Strava - if no one knows about it, does it really count?
if it was an activity on foot - running or walking - it had to be at least one mile
if it was a general workout - swimming, gym work, HIIT, an abs workout to top-up, - it had to be at least 10 minutes long
I envisaged myself doing 5k most days, a long run once a week, maybe a HIIT session to break it up and use swimming as recovery after an event. Maybe I would overdo it and feebly do a walk around our village to log an activity as I nursed an injury or had a couple of days rest. With more events planned in early 2023 I'd have to keep it going through the colder winter days. By Christmas I'd be unstoppable and the festive gluttony would barely be a pothole on my road to fitness supremacy!
This has not been entirely the case...
The year started well with runs and swims and HIIT workouts, getting me ready for the Boston marathon in April (the marathon in a Boston, not the marathon in the Boston). A week later we were off to Stratford for the Shakespeare marathon.
I quickly learned that back-to-back marathons were not viable - I dismounted the physio table following a complimentary massage feeling completely beaten up, relieved to find I still had my keys and wallet!
The recovery had to be quick, as it was only a month until the Matlock marathon. Add into this the walking training for Race to the King in June and it was a juggling act to recover properly from Stratford, increase and then taper for Matlock and continue training for RTTK. But this was the point - getting my fitness to the point where I could diversify the training (or the training goal) without losing all that had gone before.
Things could settle down for a bit through the summer - keep my fitness ticking along as I intended, before ramping it up again, ready for the Rutland marathon in September and the Abingdon marathon in October.
There was a scare in August - we'd travelled to Salisbury for the weekend. Having had a relaxing evening drinking wine with our Air BnB hostess, it was time for bed. At around 11.45 Rosie asked "Have you done your exercise today?" Sh!t. I had not. I quickly grabbed my watch, loaded up a YouTube video and did a 10-minute abs workout - not a distance, but at least 10 minutes - I had almost failed after 192 days.
As we approached the autumn months I started to look at early 2023 events to continue the marathon A-Z. However, I started a new job in September which meant my morning and evenings were now largely given over to the new commute. Between that and not finding an event for early spring and I'd rather lost my motivation and momentum (28 miles in Northumberland in February is a) not a marathon but an ultra and b) beyond a reasonable distance to travel only to be frozen half to death).
But since Abingdon in October, and with not a lot booked for 2023, I've been trying to keep the streak going - 300 days, 325 days, 350 days - I was basically too far in to not finish it. However I was largely just wandering around Birmingham city centre on my lunch break, occasionally taking a different turn to wander off in a different direction. And since that scare in August there have been quite a few more, where I've got in to bed and then realised there's still one left thing to do for the day and I've looked up a HIIT workout or, more usually, done another abs workout.
I've still done the occasional run and we now have to look towards April and our 50km walk out of Windsor, but personally, I couldn't wait for the year of exercise to be over. The one thing I can say is that my core strength has probably never been better!
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