What daily running taught me about habit building

Written by Anna Shannon

It’s like going from level 0 to level 100, skipping all the levels in between, and wondering why we can’t keep up. We need those other levels to learn, building up to the next one. Often, when we’re too fast out of the gate, we then blame ourselves for ‘failing’ – guilt and shame flooding our brains.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can change the way we approach habits with things like daily exercise and movement.

Setting yourself a realistic goal

It’s much better to go down the route of having an achievable minimum goal and then if you manage to go above and beyond, that’s a bonus. If the initial bar is too high, then we are already limiting our chance of ‘success’.

When the world closed during the pandemic, running was one of the few options available to us in the UK as a form of daily exercise. I decided to see if I could run a mile a day for a month, and so on the 1^st July 2020, I ran a single mile. The next day I ran other mile, and the next day, and the next day. Thirty-one days of running. And at a mile a day, it was achievable, only taking between 8 to 10 minutes out of my day, but it also felt like enough to also stretch me.

I kept the goal achievable of a mile a day. If I had tried to run 10 kilometres or miles every day, there’s no way I would have been able to keep it up long term.

We all lead busy lives with different pressures, and it can be very hard to carve out time to move our bodies intentionally. Your body also needs time to recover and rest after strenuous movement, which a daily 10k would have been, and so my body would have, at some point, refused to do it (i.e. injury, pain etc.). A daily mile means that even on the days that I need to take it slower and easier, it is still achievable.

Keep the feedback loop open

Time has ticked on, and I’ve now been daily running for over 1,300 days, coming up to the four year mark this July. I’m surprised that I’ve managed to keep it up, as I still would hesitate to even call myself a runner, being someone who actively did not like running.

Or that’s what I told myself at least. On reflection, I think it’s because I thought I was rubbish on the very odd occasion I would run. I’d compare myself to people who live an athletic lifestyle, wanting to be as fast or go as far as them. But we’re all different and an 8-minute mile will mean different things to each of us.

The longer my daily running streak continues, the less concerned I am with what other people’s runs look like. What matter is that I rolled out of bed when it was still dark and ran my own mile. What matters is that I laced up my trainers on the days I really, really did not feel like it. Quiet down the external voices and influences and think about why you want to do something.

There’s also an element of adjusting your own efforts. When I started running, it was only going to be for a month, and so I pushed quite hard to begin with, craving the faster times. But as time went on, my perspective changed. I had runs where I didn’t look at the time until the end, admiring my route instead, or knowing that my legs were tired, so jogging slowly, erasing the chip on my shoulder to be the best. Sometimes your good enough is good enough.

But what if you can’t run?

Daily running might not be for everyone, but daily movement, in some shape or form, could be. For the majority of us, there will be some type of movement that works with our bodies. That could be walking for a mile a day at lunchtime, or doing ten knee raises (lifting your knee upwards one leg at a time) each morning as you wait for the kettle to boil. What matters is that we move in a way that our bodies allow, which will strengthen us, not only physically, but mentally too.