Jerry Seinfeld had a pretty good life hack back in his days in order to become a better comic. He put up a calendar on the wall and with a red marker he crossed out each day he wrote a joke. The goal was to write one joke each day. Write a joke, mark it up on the calendar. This would eventually create a chain of red marks on the wall and would, in turn, make you work harder not to break that chain by creating a habit.

For the past few months I’ve had my own chain going, coincidentally, it also started from a joke.

What’s the joke? Me running! 🙂

At some point in late 2017, while sitting at a party with friends, the subject of running came up. Or more to the point, how everyone around me seemed to be running. A pretty big percentage of my work colleagues, friends, or facebook acquaintances were all training half and full marathons, triathlons, and other -thons I’ve never heard of.
And just like that, an idea was born. Or more of a question really. The question was: how long would it take me to run 10km.

So one day I got my ass off of the couch and ran a 5k, Endomondo in tow. Sometime later I did 10k. And sometime after that, I ran my first half-marathon in 2 hours and 45 minutes. That event was in April of this year.

Since then, I’ve been pretty good about running, even splurging on a Premium membership of Endomondo which allowed me to set up a training goal for a faster 10k run. That is when Endomondo first made me run four times a week, with a nice and easy 10k run on Sundays, later on bringing that 10k to a 13k every Sunday. And so it went, that for every Sunday since July of this year I’ve run at least a 10k, bringing that up to at least a 13k since August. A minor feat, but a pretty good chain nonetheless.

Today, however, I broke that chain. And I feel shitty about it, hence this post. The reasons are aplenty: I’m sick, coughing and sneezing my nose off all weekend, my wife fell ill today as well and I did some tending to her as well today, and it’s freezing outside with our very first snowfall today. Yeah, I know. They’re all GOOD REASONS. But I just couldn’t get myself to run that 13k today. This also means that my other chain, running at least 100km a month, which I’ve done for the past three months, will also most likely be broken. Damn. It’s just that November, and I suppose all coming winter months till March or so, are crappy running months here in Poland. So I need to either join a gym, or figure some other plan to get my feet running while not getting sick, cold, or wet.

In the meantime, sorry universe. I’m breaking the chain.

PS.

I have improved my half-marathon time by almost half an hour since April.