The day after is often just as important as the day of. The day of a race is often when the cheerleaders come out and the streets are lined with people shouting encouragement so when you falter, you won’t fall. The music, the energy, the presence of other runners chasing the same goals, the reality of the day you’ve prepared for, they all help you stay the course. That’s the day of.

Then comes the day after. The banners are taken down, no cheering squad shows up and if you decide to run, you run alone. The day after becomes an opportunity to prove to yourself why you showed up to run – whether you are motivated by others or if you can push yourself. Having a strong support system is incredibly important but the push, often, has to come from within.

Today is day 24 of the daily workout challenge that I started with my virtual running-buddy. This week, the goal is to average 2 miles everyday but today I am also chasing a personal goal to log a 5K (3.11 miles) to participate in a challenge on Runkeeper, the app I use to record my daily runs.

Yesterday was Global Running Day and there were activities all over the city for non-runners to cross the threshold to calling themselves runners too. I attempted to log the 5K on my app and experienced technical difficulty so even though I ran over 3.3 miles, my workout didn’t qualify. So today, the day after, I tried again.

Run 24 update:

Running 3+ miles again on the second day wasn’t as hard as I imagined it would be. I ran easy, slow and steady, stopped for 2 water breaks when I got to the park and overall, it took 33 minutes to complete. 

1st water break

2nd water break

workout complete

Having these new shoes definitely helped. 

New Nike trainers

couldn’t wait to break them in

Central Park in the background

What did you do to celebrate Global Running Day? Are you working out today as well?