consistency

I hate getting up early. 

I live for nights I don’t have to set an alarm.  There’s such a pleasure that washes over me when I look at my old fashioned alarm clock before pushing the dog out of my spot to lie down for the night.  I look at the digital numbers on the clock and realize I don’t have to get up early.  I don’t have to set the alarm.  I smile and then the dog growls at me for waking him up.  

I loved sleeping in when I was a kid and there were certainly some late mornings in my childhood when I was allowed to sleep past 10:00 am.  But my parents didn’t really think it was good for anyone to “sleep all day” which is what they called sleeping past 10:00.  It’s oddly ironic that I’ve had jobs and schedules that have forced me to get up early for most of my adult life.  

During the school year I set my alarm for 4:55 am.  You may think that’s ridiculously early and wonder why any lover of sleeping in would voluntarily do that to themselves.  So why do I get up that early?  Is it to get to work on time?  No.  It’s so I can run.  

When I started running every day about 12 years ago, I ran whenever I could squeeze in a run around my schedule.  Some days I ran at school, but most days I ran after I got home from work.  This forced me to think (worry) about running all day.  A couple of years of that had me feeling my age as I came home dead tired and realized I still had to run 3.1 miles.  I knew it would be terrible to try to run before work.  I knew I hated getting up early.  The runstreak eventually grew in importance and finally won out over sleep.  That’s when I started getting up well before the sun.

I’ve sacrificed many things to honor the runstreak.  I’ve put myself in danger, ran in all sorts of bad weather, ran near midnight, and ran in crazy places, but the greatest sacrifice I’ve made is the sacrifice of sleep.  If I have to be somewhere in the morning, I set that early alarm and miraculously drag myself out of bed when it goes off.

There are a million things I’ve learned from running every day but one that has been on my mind a lot lately is consistency.  More specifically, long term consistency.

When I set out to create a whole new body of drawings in 2020, one of the reasons I was successful was consistency.  I didn’t wait for inspiration to visit and sprinkle fairy dust on my brain.  I didn’t wait to draw until I felt like drawing.  Every single day, I marched myself into my studio and I drew.  If I didn’t have ideas, I sat there until the ideas came.  If I didn’t feel like drawing, I sat there and drew anyway.  What I noticed about developing this habit of going in every day and as Anne Lamott would say, putting “butt in chair”, is that consistently doing this over and over again created a space of inspiration and expectation.  

Over the years I’ve seen a lot of my running friends start and stop a running streak.  Some set out to only streak for a set period of time.  Some have the greatest of plans and intentions but are sidelined by injuries far beyond their control.  But most, I would say, break their streaks because they fail to prioritize consistency.  This doesn’t just mean they fail to run every single day.  It means they fail to create a space for running in their life every single day.  It means they fail to choose to eat and drink what will allow them to run at a specific time.  It means they fail to plan their schedule around running.  That slightly different day finally comes and they flinch.  They’re too full, too tired, or too busy and the thing that falls off the schedule is running.

Consistency means creating the space for things to happen.  Of course something must be important and prioritized in order for us to create space for it.  We must consciously decide this thing is worth it.  And maybe we have to decide that our will is stronger than our weakness.

Consistency is the key to a running training plan.  You print out a plan and you choose to stick to the plan.  Each mile or workout on the plan is never seen as optional.  It’s not what you’ll do if you have time, it’s what you will make time to do.  The consistency of a training plan is designed to get you in the physical condition to actually be able to run the distance.  But the other side of that consistency is mental.  The consistency becomes your strength around the halfway point of the race when your body wants to stop.  When your shoe feels weird and that odd pain begins screaming in your hip and there’s the slightest thought of stopping, your brain remembers the consistency with which you trained and it says, “keep going”.  

I didn’t begin running every day because I had consistency.  I began running every day because I wanted to become consistent.  Consistency isn’t something some people are just born with or without.  You get consistency the same way you get anything else; you practice.  You set small goals for a week and you meet them.  Then you set larger goals for a month and you meet them.  When you miss a day or fall short of a goal, you don’t quit.  You get up and you start again because this was something you felt was important.  The more you practice, the better you get.

It's easy to look back and see how each of my ridiculous challenges have helped me practice consistency.  After grad school I decided to do a new drawing every week for a year.  I double booked solo sculpture exhibits by accident and decided to just make a whole new show instead of canceling.  I somehow decided to start drawing butts every week and posting them online.  Each of these challenges were based on goals with accountability.  Each one made me more consistent.

Do you wish you were more consistent?  Do you care enough to do something about it?  Set a goal.  Challenge yourself to practice and see what happens.