Looking back: January, February and March

I did the first three months of this challenge in quiet with nobody watching... which turns out to be a strange way to start something that is now very public. So here's the proper look back, with the numbers and the bit that the numbers leave out.

The start

On the 1st of January I started out steady, and honestly it felt like a bit of a dare. Like with 52Peaks, it was a bit of a mystery how it would go - but decided to give it a crack anyway.

In 2026, I hadn't run consistently for a couple of years due to life and times and an accident that took me out for a while. The idea of 26 runs a month sounded great on paper... and slightly ridiculous the moment I had my shoes on.

I didn't have a plan, only a rule that I'd made up: if I got outside and ran, it counted, however short.

That rule did most of the work in January.

I finished the month with 29 runs, 157 km and over 2,100 m of climbing, which is the biggest climbing month of the whole year so far (maybe I was a bit over zealous?), and it included a ten day streak where I ran every single day from the 6th.

I think I was running on pure novelty and a bit of fear that if I missed one early on... the whole thing would quietly fall over.

February

February is a short month and I treated it that way. 27 runs and ticking just over 100 km, almost all of it on the road.

Nothing dramatic happened, which was good and it was the month where running stopped feeling like a project and started feeling like something I just did - like making a coffee, and I was a few runs ahead of schedule going into March. Woohoo! Ahead of the curve already... "this is EASY?" ...he said.

March

Then I got sick.

I fell short and I didn't really recover in time to give it a good go. I just lost too many days but was still happy to finish the month with 19 runs. It's the only month i've missed the mark on... so far(!)

What I remember is how much I actually cared about it. It was frustrating! I'd barely told anyone about the challenge and I still felt like I'd let somebody down. It took a while to see that the sensible thing was to rest, make up the runs in the months that followed and let the total be the thing that counts.

That small decision to stop treating one bad month as a failure probably saved the rest of the year.

So, the first quarter in numbers

• 75 runs, against a target of 78, so three behind
• 334 km in total. Not bad for getting into the rhythm
• 29 hours on my feet and 3,583 m of climbing
• Six runs with the kids, which were never the fastest or the furthest and are possibly my favourites :-)

What I took from it

I wasn't fit in January, and by the end of March I was sick and behind the eight ball.

It's quite a funny thing to be proud of that, but like with everything, consistency is king. Next up, the quarter where it really started to click.

Mā te wā

Mat