30 Days of Morning Runs

How It Came About, Mindset, Challenges, Benefits, Lessons Learned, and Moving Forward

12 Minute Runs everyday since March 13, 2023.

How It Came About

30 Days of Morning Runs started with a question that I had asked myself in my journal – What can I do to prevent complacency from setting in? 

Complacency – That feeling that you can just coast, like you’re okay just the way you are. Like you can ride on what it is you’ve already done and accomplished, as if there isn’t the need for further growth and development. 

I got my answer to the question a few days later while driving over to the tennis courts to teach. I wasn’t consciously thinking about it but an idea came as a “Hey! Why not go on early morning runs?” 

Waking up early and going on a daily run were two things I had told myself that I wanted to do consistently, and doing them together I thought would be a great way to start the day. But I could never quite muster the willpower to stay disciplined enough to fight through the late night battles and early morning struggles of actually going to sleep early enough and getting up every day to do it.

I told myself though, 30 days. Just 30 days. It’s probably going to suck. They’ll be mornings where you really don’t want to do it. When you’ll be tired and sore. But 30 days. You can do it.

I decided I’d post a screenshot of the run on Instagram to act as a place of public documentation of what it is I was doing, to elicit a sense of social pressure from the people I knew and were close with (although, in reality I knew no one would really care if I did the 30 days or not).

And then I just started.

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Mindset

I created a short and direct guide for myself with the purpose of helping establish a consistent routine, starting the day with the right mindset, and serving as a reminder for what to focus on. 

Here it is:

A Guide For Your Run

1. Read everyday with a smile. Get the things that repeat daily right. With the proper mindset – Be grateful. Stay positive. Feel energetic.
2. Primary Focus – Breathing. Consciously. Deeply. Breathe.
3. Relaxed – Head upright. Eyes forward. Stay tall. Chest up. Shoulders back. Arms pumping forward at 90°. Foot strikes quick and light under center of gravity. 
4. Sense. See, hear, feel and smell all that’s around.
5. Thoughts of past and future? They will come. Acknowledge. Accept. Breathe.
6. Push hard to the end. 
7. Walk outside. Set watch. Outloud countdown – 3, 2, 1. Begin.

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Challenges

Although getting up to run after nights with little sleep and general muscle soreness from the previous day’s training was a challenge, by far the biggest challenge both physically and mentally was getting hit with a virus, with its symptoms starting on March 29, lasting until April 2. 

I’m assuming it was likely COVID. Energy levels were low; I felt particularly weak in the legs; and had pretty severe diarrhea, going from 180.4lbs to 170.0lbs over the span of four days.

The mentality I did my best to adopt while sick was that of testing one’s limits, seeing just what could still be done given the physiological effects of much lower levels of energy and the psychological battle of knowing I needed to rest, but not wanting to rest too much. 

On March 31, I thought I was getting over hill so I pushed a bit harder on my run, coached a player in the morning, and trained in the afternoon, before heading over to do some more coaching in the evening. That’s when things went downhill. 

The first hour of coaching went by relatively smoothly, but at the start of the second hour, I ran to the bathroom and the diarrhea wouldn’t stop. I tried heading back to the courts but pretty much instantly felt dizzy, like I was going to pass out; started sweating profusely and needed to go to the bathroom again. I was in a single toilet washroom and felt alone. 

Anxiety crept in from the thought of passing out and having no one there, and I decided to call an ambulance. 

While waiting for the ambulance to arrive, the symptoms settled down. After 30 minutes of waiting, I canceled the ambulance and drove myself home. 

It’s necessary that some adjustments will be needed along the way – the next two days I took it much easier.

It’s important first to test one’s limits, then to accept the need to pull back once you’ve gotten there. 

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Benefits

The biggest benefits easily relate to mindset.

• Sticking to the things you tell yourself you’re going to do – doing so when it’s definitely not something you’d particularly like to be doing, when you’d much rather do other things, like being in bed sleeping for instance, but sticking to it and doing it anyways. 

• Feeling a sense of accomplishment knowing that you did do it, and developing higher levels of confidence in knowing that there’s just not many people who are willing to do things like this.

• Arguably the most significant benefit as it relates to my mindset was in terms of thought control. I essentially used the run as a mindfulness practice. Realizing that upon awakening the same thoughts would crop up day after day, both of my past and future, I decided I would focus on the breath while running, acknowledging that various thoughts would come, accepting them for what they were, and reorienting my attention back to the breath. This helped manage feelings of doubt, stress, guilt and worry. 

In terms of the numbers: I started March 13 with 2.69km; had lows of 0.71km on April 1 and April 2 (when I had the virus); and hit a high of 3.00km on April 6 and April 9. 

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Lessons

1. Push Hard And Do The Work Even When You’re Not At Your Best

A lot can still be accomplished. And even if there weren’t any tangible results to show for your effort, the intangibles – the mindset you adopted of not giving in, of not taking it easy on yourself, of still giving it your best effort – will pay massive dividends in the work you’re able to produce when you are running at your best and full potential. 

2. Be Willing To Make Adjustments Along The Way

If there’s clearly a more effective way to do something and other areas of your life are suffering because of a condition you had arbitrarily set for yourself, let go, leave your pride at the door, and be willing to make some adjustments to your original plan. There’s nothing stopping you changing things and there isn’t anything wrong with making adjustments that will lead to far more successful results.

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Moving Forward

It feels incredibly good to have that 30 day streak of getting up and getting moving, and it’s not one that I want to stop. 

Once you have that all important element of momentum on your side, you want to keep building on it, day by day, small incremental step by small incremental step. 

It’ll be interesting to interpret how this start to the morning influences the rest of the day, and the kind of impact it will have over a sustained period of time. 

More on this to come.