Today I completed a 365 day run streak. I have run at least one mile per day for the past year.

To mark the occasion, below are some initial reflections, interesting stats from the past year, plus a thought about what comes next.

Initial Reflections

You can do just about anything once a day. Most days it was inconvenient to fit in a run. Some days it was nearly impossible. But when the question was when—not if—it somehow became more possible.

Days are different. There were some days where an 11-minute mile felt like a beating. Other days, a 10 mile run at 10-minute pace felt like a breeze. (Time of day, hydration, nutrition, and stress level were all major factors.)

I am certainly not faster than I was when I started, but I have far more endurance.

For some days, weeks, or seasons, the bare minimum is all I had in me. A mile a day for three weeks beats zero miles a day for three weeks.

I have not had a major injury this year. A lingering case of plantar fasciitis has remained, and my legs have been sore for a year, but I did not have an injury that sidelined me entirely.

Running with a stomach bug and running with hiccups and running after a drink or two are all very unpleasant experiences.

My wife picked up a running habit in the past year, and generally runs with me at least one night a week. This has been a great addition to our marital tool belt. (If she asks me an uncomfortable question, I can still run away!)

Interesting Stats

• 567.5 miles total
• Average of 1.5 miles per day
• Longest runs: 13.1 miles (Dallas Half), 10 miles with Ben, and a few 9s around White Rock.
• Latest run: 11:30pm

What’s Next?

While I am not entirely sure what I plan to train for, I do plan to continue running every day except Thursdays and Fridays starting this week. The streak was a great way to become a runner (again), but rest days are going to be crucial if I actually want to become a better runner.

Best Run Pictures from the Year

Frozen 10 miler with Ben … before his 50 mile race.

Dallas 2-miler with the Family the day before the Half.

Solo run on Pre's trail in Eugene, OR.

We are all beginners in the liturgy, really. All of us—from the first-time visitor who finds himself pain helplessly through the Prayer Book wondering what is happening, to the aged priest who has known it all by heart for half a century—are only on the lower slopes of worship. If the great seraphim themselves cover their faces in the presence of the Divine Majesty, who of us will claim to be experts at the act of approaching the Throne with offerings of adoration and praise.

From The Liturgy Explained. (The old edition)

'Man is what he eats.’ With this statement the German materialist philosopher Feuerbach thought he had put an end to all ‘idealistic’ speculations about human nature. In fact, however, he was expressing, without knowing it, the most religious idea of man.

For the Life of the World, Alexander Schmemann. The opening sentences of a book I will never tire of rereading.

But a new major era seems to be just beginning in the shadow of the old and dying modernism. I have a name for it, for what it’s worth. I call it trans-modernism. We’re moving into a new historical period in which we will rediscover the validity of a lot of our traditional understanding, but we’re going to discover it intellectually.

Almost an aside in Paul Vitz’ Socrates in the City talk on Fatherhood. But an intriguing one nonetheless.

Since the beginning of recorded history, empires and civilizations have risen and fallen; sometimes they would seem to have completely disappeared. It would probably be truer to say that the races who have developed the varying civilizations have disappeared, but that their gifts to the world have survived, not always in the form in which they gave them, but in the form in which the world has needed them.

Dorothy Mills, on the fall of Rome in the introduction to her Book of the Middle Ages.

An observation after having run every day for 297 days in a row:

The first mile is almost always the worst/hardest mile of any run.

That’s why he and two co-authors—Dweck and Greg Walton of Stanford—recently performed a study that suggests it might be time to change the way we think about our interests. Passions aren’t “found,” they argue. They’re developed.

From a much appreciated article by Olga Khazan—especially for those of us in the world of K-12 Classical Education.

Change your name, and fool the angel of death. Read more from my recent article for the Feast of the Holy Name here.

Spent some time reflecting on Psalm 91, vocation, the Daily Office, work and life balance, and more on a good friend’s podcast this week. Give it a listen here!

Working title for a writing project I am chipping away at these days:

Presence in a Virtual Age: a sacramental theology you didn’t know you needed

I have to imagine that those who work towards developing or are in any way excited about the Metaverse have only ever watched the first five minutes of a Black Mirror episode.

I'm not so sure that the problem with Twitter is that people are feeling the need to hold back from posting on Twitter...

Also, there is a name for what "holds people back" from posting: Temperance.

The Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) is essential background reading for the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-13). The parallels and inversions between the two are uncanny.

From mocking him, to being intrigued as I learned more about his personal life (including his visit to the Monastery of Christ in the Desert, where I spent some time before my ordination), to a borderline fascination with the man, I am now listening to Matthew McConaughey narrate his autobiography. A real treat so far.

Three quick thoughts as I approach two months without a smart phone.

1. I don't need a smartphone.
2. Very few day-to-day companies on the planet believe #1 is true.
3. I sometimes don't believe #1 is true.

From confused phone carriers to pick-up orders to Amazon needing to verify that I am actually me when I login on my computer, the modern world is built around the notion that every customer owns a smart-phone with email and browser access, alongside the instant ability to download an app. This was likely true before the pandemic, but is increasingly noticeable now.

The basic temptation in the Garden of Eden boils down to this:

Take, eat. This food is your path towards independence from your Creator. Towards reliance on yourself alone. In this bite lies the ability to define your own world. To reorder the universe around your own desires.

Whereas refusing to read these authors and learn about their worlds — or to do so merely in order to melt them down in the moral acids of our own unexamined certainties — is to close ourselves off both from our own past and from the possibility of living a fully self-aware life in the present.

That there are people in our time who see little value in the study of the classics is hardly surprising. There have always been those who care little for learning, or who value it only for its usefulness in advancing practical projects. But that such a crude form of philistinism has begun to gain a foothold in the very institutions tasked with preserving and passing on our classical inheritance is troubling. It's a sign that present-day political concerns and obsessions have begun to intrude on and badly distort the work of the university.

Damon Linker, Cancel the Classics?

Catholicism is a very tangible business—it's about seeing and hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling as much as it's about texts and arguments and ideas.

George Weigel, Letters to a Young Catholic