For a couple weeks now, I’ve been working on a post entitled 5 reasons to do a running streak or 10 reasons or 15 or whatever number I felt exhausted all the motivations I was coming up with as I was running.

But during yesterday’s run, I had an epiphany. I don’t need 5 reasons or 10 or 15. There’s really only one reason to get up and go running every day and it has to do with one of the universal laws. Newton expressed it as the first law of motion:

Bodies at rest stay at rest;  bodies in motion stay in motion. 

When I wasn’t running everyday, just getting out of bed to run was the hardest thing to do in the mornings. My alarm would go off, I would snooze, check the weather, watch TV, scroll through Instagram, do whatever I could find to delay so I’d run out of time. When I finally got out on one of my sporadic runs, I would run for a minute and have to stop because I was wheezing and puffing and my hips felt like they had over-rotated and needed to just stop. That’s because I was a body at rest and everything in me just wanted to stay at rest. I was fighting the law. 

Then I decided to do the MODRUN – my version of a running streak where I run six days and take one day off each week to rest. It was hard. Really hard. And the first few weeks, I still didn’t do it everyday. Inertia is hard to overcome. But as I ran more, I felt myself getting stronger, I started pushing the distance I would run before I needed a walk break. 4 minutes. 5 minutes. Running half a mile without stopping was a huge accomplishment. And I kept going. Each time, trying to get better.

This week, I hit another milestone. Being able to run one mile nonstop has always been one of my fitness markers and I hit it on Monday. It felt AWESOME.

I felt strong and healthy and athletic. That’s a feeling I can get used to. I can keep running. A body in motion will stay in motion. 

My goal is to keep my MODRUN going. Even if I miss a day here and there, I’ll try to run six days every week, trying to improve each time, keeping my body in motion.

Sometimes, there’s only one reason to do something but it might be the only reason you need.

T.O.L.