Clear headed as I reach Foggy goal

Kev has notched up a run every day for a year

Unusually, I am going to start with tomorrow as December 21 is a date of special interest to me. It’s one that I have been working to reach every day without fail for the last 12 months. Appropriately, I share the date with the achievement of the fictitious character Phileas Fogg, as it’s the date he completed his journey round the world in 80 days.

More about my tie-up with Fogg next week, but my achievement is that I will have completed an epic challenge – assuming I don’t befall a disaster before Monday – and that was to run every day for a year.

I have run an average of over 11 kilometres a day to reach a total of 4,100 kilometres (over 2,500 miles) – not bad for a 55 year old with terminal prostate cancer even if I say so myself. The shortest days were a handful of two-kilometre runs when I was injured, recovering from a big run or just hungover. The longest was 125 kilometres, a painful experience that still sends shudders down my spine!

I am pretty proud of what I did for so many reasons – people didn’t believe I would or could, it enabled me to continue to fundraise for

Prostate Cancer UK when races were cancelled and, perhaps most importantly,

I proved that the seemingly impossible is possible but you will never find out until you put your foot on a metaphorical start line and see how far you get.

As for my personal record ‘streak’ am I giving up? Hell no, because if I stop now I go back to a streak of zero so I am just going to keep on running every day as it’s a good habit I have got into, bringing me fresh air, a clear head and a feeling of being alive no matter what else the world is throwing around at me.

Perhaps you too will see if you can start your own ‘streak’ for something that will make a difference to you, be it running, stopping smoking or some other form of exercise every day. Just remember to start small and build up slowly!

Until next week,

Kev

The longest one I did was 125km and I still shudder at the thought

(0.7mg zinc, 2.4mcg selenium)