Back in September I fell pretty ill with COVID. It had me down for almost three weeks - with at one point coming pretty close to the edge. It was a very eye-opening experience in how fragile life is; and left me considering the value of life and the precious time we have ever since.

In the wake of going through that experience, I started running. Initially, it was because I needed a way to get my lungs back in shape, but now has become just another aspect of my life. I started with some basic skate shoes, but since investing in a pair of running shoes I have noticed a big difference in the amount of stress it puts on my hamstrings and knees.

For a while, I was running and tracking my time using a time tracking app on my phone. Last I checked, I was at around an 10-minute mile. I would take and specifically run a loop through the small town I live in. The distance was 1.13 miles, which gave me a great benchmark to time and measure by. There is a point where I had a few encounters with a pack of local junkyard dogs, but they haven’t bothered me in several weeks.

I’m not quite sure what inspired the change, but recently I stopped tracking my running distance and time altogether. Now I just go out and run until I am exhausted. I do notice signs that my endurance is improving, just by the distance I can go before I have to walk for a bit; but my path is no longer just a loop. I will often just run down the highway, turn around, and run back. There is one hill that I traverse almost weekly now; and am yet to make it to the top without pause.

As a data scientist it sort of kills me to not track my progress, but there is something to be said about living a frictionless existence. The more you can remove barriers to activity, the more likely you are to go ahead and just go. I did the same thing with lifting weights - I find that if I just leave them around, I use them all the time.