I’ve got to admit, I have a soft-spot for streaks.

A few years ago, I had my first-ever Big Mac. What can I say – my parents weren’t big proponents of fast food. I was in the airport in Lima, Peru with my friends Adam and Sam. We were heading back to Boston after a great summer spent in Pisaq. I don’t even remember why we got McDonald’s – Big Macs in particular, but we decided it was a great idea. Afterwards, I thought nothing of it and went on living my generally McDonalds-less life as I had been for the previous twenty-some years.

Fast forward ten months and I’m back in the Lima airport, this time with my STRIVE co-leader, Nic. Somehow, the talk gets to my previous trip here and my subsequent first Big Mac. Turns out, all this Big Mac talk has Nic hankering for the nasty burger and I find myself back at Peruvian Micky D’s, having my second Big Mac in as many trips.

At that point, there was no going back. It was a streak. Every time since then that I’ve gone to the Lima airport, I’ve had a Big Mac – including, but not limited to, a particularly brutal week where I found myself at the airport close to a half-dozen times. I don’t even like them. Something about me just really likes continuing silly traditions…

 

When I found myself with a bunch of extra time and energy this past week – probably due to the combination of Mariana’s visit coming to an end and my mileage beginning to drop – I discovered a new pull from writing. Between my stress over being injured, my trip back to Boston to run the Treadmill Half Marathon World Record, and Mariana coming down shortly after, I realized I hadn’t sat down to just write in a long time.  One of my New Year’s resolutions had been to write every day and (other than the most literal interpretation), I wasn’t doing too well. So, I sat down and began putting some thoughts on (virtual) paper.

I guess I had a lot on my mind because what first came out was a jumble of unrelated chaos. I ended up taking that mess and splitting it into a couple of different short essays, publishing them on successive days.

It wasn’t until today that I realized I had published the first piece with twenty-six days remaining until the Marathon and, since then, I’ve published something each day. You see where this is going, right?

I just can’t resist the cute orderliness of it all! So, I’m going to try to keep this streak going and see what happens. I have no promises that I’ll make it to Marathon Monday. If I have nothing to say, I’ll try to find something interesting someone else has written to post or something I’ve written in the past. I have some longer things I’d like to tackle which may be more serious and some shorter posts may be anecdotes from life as a gringo distance runner in Ecuador (though, my life is pretty boring…)

Anyways, if you have suggestions or requests, feel free to shoot me an email (Tyler@strivetrips.org). Otherwise, I’m just going to write about whatever I want and it’ll probably be the same seven people that still read it…

Happy trails!