Another Month of Garmin Goals (Which Maybe Lead to Some Foot Pain!...)

For the month of February, I hit 10,000 steps every day (and had to work a little to do it). In March last month, I kept that streak up so that I could hit a 60 day "streak" goal with my Garmin. That wrapped up with day 60 on March 31st:

The majority of Feb...


... and the rest of March ending with a SHORT day on April 1st!

I thought maybe some extra "stress" on my legs as winter was ending could be a good thing for this running season. Maybe walking a bit more and being on my feet a bit more would help strengthen things going into summer. Maybe. I dunno.

So why did the streak die?

First of all, it was partly due to the fact that I already got in my 60 day streak, and I don't think Garmin recognizes more than that. The "goal" aspect was gone.

Secondly, I had a busy day on the 1st, and I realized I probably wasn't going to get in all my steps, and I didn't push it. See my last point.

And third, at the end of the day, some foot pain snuck in on the bottom of the ball of my right foot. It was sharp pain just at the end of the day. And then it was around all day on Sunday (the 2nd) as well. Maybe all the stair climbing that I did on Friday aggravated something? It also could have been the heavy snowfall we had the night before and all the trouble of clearing that snow. I don't know. One of my "problems" is that I keep doing the same things: like my long runs are 95% the same sort of run. I know I could get faster if I mix things up more... but when I DO mix things up (like doing a more "strength" style workout of a ton of stairs one day or working to get in a lot of extra steps over the last 2 months), something flares up on my easily injured body. So I don't feel the need to try to mix things up TOO much. And honestly, I'm fine just keeping on keeping on.

I was ready for my long run last Monday (36 hours after the pain started) to be cut short. But it actually felt BETTER after the run! It wasn't 100% for a few days, and I made sure to keep my shoes on as much as possible as it was extra sore when pushing off barefoot, but it was probably back to about 90-95% by last Thursday. And then it was fine for my 2x2 mile intervals on Friday. Whew. I've been real lucky on the injury front over the last 2 years!

Oh, and because I was working to hit 10,000 steps everyday AND trying to record a fair number of "walks" throughout March, I also recorded my most steps in a month:

I started wearing my Garmin "full time" in mid-Dec... which is sort of obvious.

So April 1st and 2nd were both less than 10,000 steps, and those were the first days since January 30th. Now I've had 8 days over 10,000 steps again, so we'll see if I can hit another 60 day streak... maybe...