The running routine: 4,300 straight days of 3-mile runs is just right

Because I actually find that running longer distances can be quite boring, Bloomsday is like a marathon.

But 3 miles at a time? Now that’s my sweet spot.

For more than 11 years – including every day through my 50s – I’ve run at least 3 miles each and every day. It’s a streak that started July 30, 2011, and when Bloomsday rolls around on May 7, that will be exactly 4,300 days. Cal Ripken – baseball’s Mr. 2,632 – eat your heart out.

That’s an even number for an odd addiction. But when you’re a creature of habit, streaks happen.

My wife, Freida, joined the routine. Had it not been for a broken foot a few years ago, she’d have a streak nearly as long.

I developed a fondness for running as a high schooler, but never competitively and not even close to daily. Since then, I’ve gone through the phases with fun runs galore in my 20s, plus a half-marathon I vowed at the time I’d never do again (I did do another, but only because pancakes at the finish were involved).

Even though the streak, which includes more than 12,900 miles and counting, consumes me, I stop short in calling it a love for running. It’s more akin to a necessity. Bloomsday has been and will be the one race I do every year and that has become a streak of 36 races dating to 1988.

Because it’s like a marathon to me, I don’t keep track of my time while I’m on the course – it’s just survival mode until Doomsday Hill passes, then I see what’s left in the tank.

And typically I need my music to get through runs since there’s nothing worse than listening to yourself panting for 30 minutes or so. But not on Bloomsday with its own sensory playlist of sounds, smells and sights.

I’ll also join up with our running-club friends when my body and schedule allow and enjoy my greatest discovery: beer always tastes best after a run.

In my 30s as Freida and I raised a family and settled for walking Bloomsday for many years, my weight ballooned. I have a simple philosophy with weight – eat lightly and burn those calories and fat by exercising. Through a combination of adjusting my habits – and becoming a morning person I never thought I’d become – it was in my 40s when I figured out that I always would feel better on days I started with a run than on days I didn’t.

I’m 60 now, and that still hasn’t changed. As I’ve aged, I’ve become more of a follower of the mantra, “early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” While the physical aspect of running helps the mental side, it’s the mental that tells the physical what to do.

That commitment to run every morning poses some challenges while running in the dark on roads covered with snow and ice, but I always get that run in. I never make excuses or pay attention to how I feel as I crawl out of bed (or more appropriately, fall out of bed). Layering, trail shoes and coffee are my solutions to those dilemmas.

None of the runs has been on a treadmill and very few indoors. One of those exceptions came when an exceptionally smoky day resulted in Freida and I running in my office building through the halls and up and down stairs. The other, while I was with the Eastern Washington University men’s basketball team at the NCAA Tournament “bubble” in 2021, required me to run in the Indianapolis Convention Center for a couple of days.

Call me lucky, because I’ve been fortunate to be injury and illness free to continue daily. I’ve taken a few spills, but when they happen, I just lie there for a moment, realize nothing hurts severely, then laugh at myself and continue my run.

One snowy year, I actually tripped on the same piece of ice three times in a 10-day span. The scrapes got progressively worse, so I realized my falling technique was actually getting shoddier with experience.

My feet, knees and hips are fine, and I’ve found that a little stretching, yoga and Pilates can go a long way. I run efficiently enough that I can get about 10 months out of a pair of shoes, and since I’m such a cheapskate, I wear down soles so much that plastic supports start popping out and I have to cut them off with scissors.

And I’ve avoided drug “interventions,” despite the fact there are pills for any ailment, because my body should do the work to recover.

Exercising is work, and I can sweat with the best of them, but the frequency of the runs has made it more of a routine than work. It was sometime around 2009 when the word “regardless” entered my vocabulary. Every day meant another run, and miles and routes were logged. But that was more just to see how my times stacked up day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month and year-to-year.

My times have slid over the years, and I’m not so naïve as to think they won’t continue getting worse. If I really wanted to maintain my times, I’d do more distance work, intervals, speed work, etc., but I’m quite happy with where I am.

I demand a lot out of my body, but I listen to it, too. And it tells me that 3 miles every day is just fine.

Dave Cook spent 35 years as a college Sports Information Director, first at Eastern Washington University, then at Idaho and then back for his final 30 at EWU.