The Streak
December 2020-December 2025

In a weird, drawn-out, endless, stubborn way…this was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

From Christmas Day 2020 to Christmas Day 2025, I exercised outside every single day.

Skiing, running, biking, or climbing. Outdoors.
The rules were arbitrary, but they were mine.

Through sickness, injury, deaths, awful weather, births, elections, travel, expeditions, and everything else that happens in five years…I stayed in control of the one thing that actually felt as though I could control.

I went from dating to engaged to married to celebrating our 2-year wedding anniversary. I got Covid twice, and was taken down even worse by all of the booster shots I received.

In the beginning, I ran a minimum of 3.6 miles, which I thought was 5 kilometers, for 3 years. Then I learned I was running too far, so I lowered it to 3.5 miles. Turns out that isn’t a 5k, either. I’m actually still not sure how far 5km. is in miles, but I decided to skip all that and just turn it up to a 5-mile minimum for year 5.
Skiing had to be at least 1500 vertical feet of climbing and descending. Climbing had to be a “a few” (outdoor) pitches. I think the rule for biking was at least 7 miles. Or was it 10? I don’t know, as I tried to not pay too much attention to the “minimums” unless I was very, very short on time.

I ran 20 miles sometimes, 50 miles other times, and 115 miles once. Sometimes I biked over 100 miles in a day, and sometimes I skied 70,000 feet in a long weekend. I tried hard not to do the “minimum,” as defined by no one but me, except on days when I had so little available time that I would typically—in a non-streak year—just take that day off.

Five years seemed like a good time to stop because, quite honestly, having done it for 5 years proved that I could essentially do it forever…if I hated myself enough. My wife, Katie, was wildly supportive during the whole time—watching me leave the house at 11:15pm to sneak in a run, or 12:01am to get one in before a busy day—and finally said that I should probably stop. I ended the streak pretty out of shape, pretty tired, and pretty over it. So she was definitely right.