Keep on running with the Runner's World Holiday Run Streak

As we all know, Christmas (and Thanksgiving for my American friends) is a notoriously difficult time to keep focused on the running or any sort of healthy diet, and for me it's always the same old problem.  It's freezing cold outside, pitch black from 4pm in the afternoon, and I find it so hard to drag myself out of the door to run, so I find myself saying that I'll go out tomorrow.  But then tomorrow comes, and I have some Christmas outing to go to, and the run gets put off again :( 


So, with a much busier diary than I ever usually have, and worse weather than there usually is, my training schedule goes out of the window, and when I combine that with the enormous quantities of mince pies, cakes and biscuits that find their way to the office & my house (and ultimately into my mouth!), I usually find myself putting on lots of weight over the festivities.  Now don't get me wrong, I have a great time...but that's always tempered by the massive guilt that I also end up with, and the frustration that the running fitness I've spent the last 12 months trying to cultivate, falls right back to rock bottom!

This year, I'm determined things will be different.

I'm focused on my diet at the moment, and have got back into doing Weight Watchers, so I'm hoping I can be [relatively] controlled with the food, but I do think I need some help with the running, and so I've decided to take part in Runner's World Holiday Running Streak Challenge.I'm going to run at least one mile every day from tomorrow (Thanksgiving) until New Year's Day!

I've tried to do run streaks before (Janathon and Juneathon) but have failed each time...I think maybe I try to do too much, so this time I will try to maintain my planned schedule, and instead of rest days, just do a couple of miles, so I'm not putting that much extra pressure on or increasing my weekly mileage too much.  If I find I'm finding it hard to motivate myself to get out of the door on a scheduled running day, I also think it'll be easier to tell myself "well, I only have to go for 1 measley mile...I can do that!" rather than thinking about the hour and a half I'm actually aiming to be out.  Once I'm on the road, I'm sure I'll be keen to finish the original distance!
So, hopefully I can improve my mindset and get more used to heading out for a run as a habit rather than it always being a big deal, but not be too much of a time drain or a physical challenge.

From looking at the twitter feed it seems loads of people are taking part (#RWRunStreak hopefully the widget below is working!) and I'm looking forward to finally achieving some consistency in my training over the holiday season.  Whether I manage to stay controlled when the mince pies start calling me is another matter, but all the extra exercise should certainly help reduce the damage!