Rebooting the (Running) Routine
What it means to start almost from scratch and adjust
It’s not the worst thing in the world to take a day off from doing something you enjoy. We all need a respite every now and again, breaks are beneficial to developing muscle memory, but multiply one day by three months and the product can be different, possibly even atrophic. For mind and body. Imagine Linus minus his security blanket for a whole season.
After 2024, competitive me remained focused on running a significant number of miles a month. While my Achilles tendons weren’t screaming at me à la Sam Kinison, they let me know. Plenty. Mature me should’ve heeded the warning signs. The Arctic chill in North Jersey had rendered it unsafe to be outside most mornings…I did my best in fairer conditions, but to worsening results. The decision was made for me: strictly walking in the spring.
Aside from the pressure and stress that comes with hitting revenue targets at the midway point of the year, I sensed July 1 approaching. It’d been painful on my soul to heal my physical pain by not running, but the tendons felt better. The heatwaves and precipitation of June had passed. So, smiling from within, I returned to my favored program of walking hard for a mile and then running, sticking to about four miles instead of double that like previously.
Mature me seems to have a leg up on competitive me. Difficult to believe.
The reboot is a microcosm of our society of convenience. Let’s take an existing framework in a new direction because we have an existing fanbase that, we assume, is hungry for more. I’m not saying that all reboots are bad, or lazy. Many excellent original ideas exist in rebooted material. But where are we in our evolution if uniquely original ideas lose to recycled plotlines more times than not?
That topic is nothing new. Nor is it new when IT instructs you to reboot before they diagnose and, hopefully, resolve the issue with your computer. The notion of rebooting yourself isn’t new either, but this is where the rubber—or, pun intended, the outer sole of your sneakers—meets the road. A critical distinction to now define is that between rebooting and starting over, the latter of which carries a heavier connotation and is associated with people struggling with addiction, for instance. Rebooting is the softer approach: It’s sort of like revising but with potential bigger edits, yet still operating within the confines of an established structure that doesn’t require major refining.
In other words, it’s who you are.
A search on Amazon reveals several self-help titles dedicated to the concept of rebooting yourself. Haven’t read any of them myself so I have no idea what they say, but my preference is for modular design like software-as-a-service platforms that scale to coincide with success. Chunk by chunk, grow from the inside out.
It’s been a week since I kicked into a higher gear. The magic number is 21 days before the reboot settles into routine, but I’ll tell you this: While circling the lakes during the morning on the Fourth of July, a pair of people who I’m friendly with—their dogs, too—said they liked seeing me running again. Within five minutes of each other, no joke. I admit I have a complicated relationship with words of affirmation, but the road had a lot more spring in the last mile.
As always, I ran to the outside mat by the front door and stopped the stopwatch on my phone. I walked to the end of the block and back a couple of times to cool down. It’d been just four days after I began running after three months of only walking, and I do understand that most reboots happen many years after the original, but I felt changed. Rebooted. And, a great omen, motivated to wake up at the crack of dawn tomorrow and get out there.
