First off, I’m not special and anybody can do this. This little journey started when I was pulling up laminate flooring listening to the Joe Rogan experience podcast. His guest was Navy Seal, and in his words, former “fatty” David Goggins. If you haven’t listened to it, please do it’s on YouTube. One of the things he talked about was rewiring your brain by running towards the things you are scared of or don’t want to do…which got me thinking about some of the things I don’t like to do. One that was apparent was running, so right then and there I committed to running a mile a day for 30 days. It was the end of June, so on July 1, 2018 the running started.
The first day I started was on a Sunday after two days in Chicago for a bachelor party. Let’s just say I wasn’t in peak physical condition after the weekend. It was around 8pm, I was in the shower, and that’s when it hit me…I had to go run. I really didn’t want to, but the thought that was overwhelming was “are you the type of person that does what he says he is going to do or not?” I didn’t want to be the type of person that ran his mouth and didn’t follow through with my actions. So I got out of the shower and instead of lounging on the couch, I put my shoes on and ran day 1.
When I started running, I didn’t have a goal for a time. The main goal was to do the work and push myself daily. I didn’t time myself everyday since that was not my goal of doing this. However, on the faster days I was fresh and well rested, and on the slower days it was after poor sleep and nutrition and I fought for every step. But I did the work, and after 30 days that’s what I’m proud of the most.
July was my busiest month all year by far for travel. I ended up running in 3 different states – Kentucky, Ohio, and North Carolina. The earliest I ran was around 6am and the lastest was 10pm. After about 4 days my calves and ankles were tight and in a lot of pain. There were plenty of times when I wanted to quit. I would start on a run and a voice in my head would say just take it easy and get the run in. I would keep telling myself that it’s only 10 minutes. You have the time to do this no matter what so get up and do it. I had plenty of easy excuses I could have used, but at the end of the day you have to just do the work. Some takeaways that I got from this challenge:
1. Get a good pair of running shoes! I did not and ran in flat shoes everyday.
2. Find a consistent time of day if possible. 3. Sleep and nutrition are very important. On the days I felt the best, I slept around 8 hours and ate good food. On the days I struggled the most, I got 5 hours sleep and no food or bad food.
It’s August 1st and my next challenge is taking only cold showers for 30 days; I will follow up with another blog. I challenge you to challenge yourself to do something for 30 days. Try to make it something you don’t want to do. Be realistic and try to keep it under 10 minutes if possible. I hope this helped and please let me know what you decide to do for your challenge! You guys rock, and I’m just happy to be in this community!
