A few years ago, at the prodding of a friend I decided to give long-distance running a try. It wasn’t a jump right into it but more of a gradual journey, with my restricting my runs to sub-10 km ones and running only once a week or so. Even that felt good, actually.

But good was not enough. Between 2017 and 2020, I managed to run 500 km cumulatively, being erratic with my timing and distance for the most part. I thought it was okay (probably was), but something happened at the beginning of 2020 - a sudden inflow of motivation and a desire to enforce discipline led me to chart out a target of 500 km in this year alone. I don’t have a solid explanation as to why this came to be but I planned my runs accordingly, aiming two runs covering a total of 15 km a week to meet the 500 km target comfortably.

But fast forward to a couple months later - COVID-19 happened, and most people found themselves staying at home for most of the day. Given a set of functional limbs it’s difficult to restrict yourself to one room for an indefinite period; accordingly, I couldn’t help but increase the frequency of my runs to get out of my room. My initially planned discipline overshot by quite a margin.

It’s 9th June today, and I’ve managed to cross my year-end target already.

Of course, it doesn’t stop there. There’s always a new challenge that beckons. A thousand km so far is a decent milestone, but now I think it’s worth giving 1000 km this year a shot.

On it!