The Altar of Consistency

The Altar of Consistency is a phrase used in the book Once a Runner, one of the quintessential running books (recently republished). It's used there in the context of a runner who, whatever the day, whatever the weather, and however he's feeling, runs twice a day.

Recently, I read another, nominally, running book, What I talk about when I talk about running by Haruki Murakami. This book is more of a memoir of Murakami-san's life since he started running around the age of thirty. He also mentions something along the same lines, saying that you have to let your legs know what is expected of them. In his case, this means running six days a week, regardless of his schedule.

At the moment, I am engaged in a similar activity. Several months ago, in my last post in fact, I reported buying a pair of Fivefingers to see how they might work for me. I am still getting used to them, since this summer has not been the best for my running consistency. I am in the process of fixing that. And while I'm on the topic, the Fivefingers seem to be doing their job. I'm getting much more used to them, which is in fact a part of this post. But I've noticed that, since I can only forefoot strike in them, and never heel strike, I have fewer problems relating to my overpronation when I'm running.

Back to the previous topic, I've started running every day. Absolutely every day, in fact. I did a 14er yesterday (my first solo attempt, pics to come later), running a significant portion of Mt Bierstadt. And today, I got up, admittedly late, and went for a short run.

And my legs responded by saying, after the run, "now what? Bring it on."

So that seems to be working well for me.

As an addition to that consistency training, I put in a second requirement: that I write every day I run. I don't need to write in this blog, but I do need to write something each day I run.

I decided to do this because one of my goals, one of the items on my bucket list for life, is to write a full book. I am not clear on what type I want to write, or what would be the best way to go about it. My mother seems set on the idea that I should write a "popular science" book, or something similar (popular control systems?) since in her opinion I am extremely good at explaining complicated ideas in a simple and understandable manner. I'l admit I always thought about writing a novel (Sci-Fi or Fantasy seems the most likely). But, who knows, with this daily running/writing thing, maybe I'll end up writing some sort of memoir day-by-day.

The reason for this is that, in every book on writing I've ever read (not many), and on every author's web page, the biggest advice they have for budding authors is to write.

Thus, I only write on the days I run which, currently, is every day.