Not sure what I was thinking.
But, like many others, I was looking for a way to interrupt the non-ending days of Mondays that the pandemic seemed to have become. A friend of mine asked me if I had seen the 496 Challenge when you start the month by running one kilometre on the first of the month. On the second day, 2 km; on the third day 3, etc. Every day you increase your running distance by one kilometre. At the end of the month you will have run 496 kms. The goal is to run for the sake of running without worrying about pace, time or performance.
I have a hard time turning down a challenge but knew that kind of distance was impossible or would land me in hospital. So after speaking to this “friend” we decided that it might be enough of a challenge to do this for the first twenty days in April 2021: that would still be 210 km for the month and to have a bit of fun doing it. When we hatched this plan there were all sorts of different kinds of running I would do: at dawn, at midnight, with my dog, on an idyllic country road.
On April 1st, it was snowy and cold. This would be portentous as I would soon realize. I ran a fun, easy one kilometre with my dog Lucy and thought how hard could this be? The next couple runs I also did with my Lucy and didn’t give much thought to where I would go but just set out to run a few kilometres. By day 5 I thought I should mix it up a bit from kilometers 5 to 8, ran figures 5, 6, 7, 8. This began a pattern of mapping out the runs prior to going. I discovered http://onthegomap.com as a great way to explore distance and places. Half way through I had run a total of 55 km in ten days and it still seemed like a fun diversion to my day.
I was doing a daily weigh in and also checking my heart-rate variability. I was curious to see if it would change over the course of the month. I used the Elite HRV app and compared the data which measures your ‘readiness’ to exercise or stress your body.
It sure was a creative way to stay in shape when there wasn’t much to do. I didn’t make it the whole month sadly finishing at 20 km on April 20. But during that period, I went from 1 km on April 1 and increasing 1km per day to 20 km. With an additional run on April 25 that month I managed 220km that month. So I guess I can strike that off my bucket list.