On Sunday I finished week 260. That's five years of training every single week, without a gap.
If you'd told 2019 Paul this, he'd have laughed, then probably had a biscuit. In 2019 I ran ten times. All year. Four of those were in January, which tells you everything about how that went.
So this one's a bit of a celebration. It's also the best evidence I've got that anyone can do this. I'm not special. I've just been stubborn in a slightly more organised way.
How it started (again)
I'd love to tell you week one was a heroic new beginning. It was one 8 km run on Monday 8 November 2021.
What Strava also remembers, unfortunately, is the bit before. I'd started again in January 2021 and run nearly 80 times by May. By the summer it had fizzled out. In September I had a burst of 32 runs in four weeks, felt brilliant, then did nothing at all for five weeks. Classic me. Burn bright, burn out, start again in January.
Then my mate Toby did one of the kindest things anyone's done for me. Life was hard at the time, and he signed me up for the New Forest Half with barely any time to train. No pressure, just a date and someone expecting me to turn up.
I ran it in 1:51 on 4 December. Not fast. But I kept going the week after, and the week after that, and I haven't stopped since. Toby and I ran together most weeks for the next couple of years, never scheduled, just two blokes holding each other to it.
Five years in numbers
I'm very data driven about my running (my wife would say "obsessed", but she's not writing this). So here's what 260 weeks looks like according to Strava, up to the end of week 259:
1,671 runs
18,967 km. That's further than London to Sydney.
1,710 hours of running. About 71 days without stopping, if you did it all in one go, which I wouldn't recommend.
Roughly 150,000 m of climbing, or about 17 trips up Everest. Some of that is my watch losing its mind under a bridge, so I'll call it 16 and a bit.
542 gym sessions, from proper weights days to the odd "Workout" that was mostly stretching and complaining
113 runs in the rain. This is Somerset. I'm amazed it's not more.
38 pairs of shoes. My wife doesn't know about at least six of these.
Tap through the years below to see how it built.
The landmarks
Five years is a lot of running, so here are the bits I'll remember.
The races
New Forest Half, December 2021. 1:51. Where it all started.
Manchester Marathon, April 2023. 2:59:19. I wrote "WELCOME TO THE SUB-3 CLUB" on Strava in capitals, because some moments deserve capitals.
Sydney Half, August 2024. 1:24:40. A half marathon PB in my forties, so I called it "Never too old for a PB".
Loch Ness Marathon, September 2024. 2:45:55, 20th overall. Loch Ness is properly hilly, and a lot of that time was earned in the gym, not just on the road.
London Marathon, April 2025. 3:12:57. A nail went through the carbon plate of my shoe at mile 4. I finished with cramp and a few walk breaks, and London cheered me round anyway. Best bad race I've ever had.
Valencia Marathon, December 2025. About 2:48. Not a PB day, but my second-fastest marathon, and I'll take that.
The setbacks
Lisbon Marathon, October 2023. We started about seven minutes late in serious heat. 3:18, and I've rarely been happier to see a finish line.
Las Vegas, December 2023. My first and only DNF. "Everything went wrong from mile one," I wrote, and pulled out after eight miles. It was one of the hardest run I've ever done, and I didn't even finish it.
London Marathon, April 2024. I went to London, collected my bib, and didn't run. More on that below.
The weird ones
The 24-hour challenge, February 2024. One run every hour for 24 hours. 25 runs, 66 km, and one run at 2:58am that I have no memory of.
The coldest run: -4°C in Wiltshire in December 2022. It felt like -9.
The hottest run: 37°C in Rome in July 2024. I named it "37 degrees and HOT" because I'd lost the ability to be creative.
The longest run: 50 km on 30 June 2025. I called it "A bit longer than usual", and was totally unplanned.It's one of two runs I've done that's longer than a marathon.
Running for someone else
Some of my favourite runs weren't about my time at all. I paced my mate Bun to a half marathon PB in Bournemouth in 2024, then round Rome a week later, where he spent a good chunk of it in what I can only call the hurt locker. This year I ran Bridgwater Half helping a friend round. A 2:05 half can feel better than a PB when you're running it for someone else.
The weeks that nearly broke it
Here's the honest bit. Not all 260 weeks had a run in them. Nine didn't.
In March 2024 I had sudden, excruciating pain on the top of my foot halfway through a recovery run. I blamed tight shoes and orthotics, and I couldn't run for seven weeks. That's when I went to London, picked up my bib for a marathon I couldn't run, and came home gutted.
So I got on the bike instead. Six weeks of Zwift, weights and some very slow walks. One session was so grim I described it on Strava as "absolutely vile". My first run back was 5 km on 4 May. Five months later I ran 2:45 at Loch Ness.
The other three weeks without a run were the week after the Las Vegas DNF (cross trainer and weights), a week in May 2025, a few weeks after London (bike and gym), and one week this May (bike and gym).
Do they count? By my rule, yes. My streak was never "run every week". It's "train every week". When you can't run, you do what you can, and you don't make up an excuse to stop. A 6-week injury used to be my exit door. In 2024 it was just a detour.
What actually kept me going
It wasn't motivation. Motivation's great, but it doesn't turn up on a Tuesday in February.
What kept me going:
A rule that was hard to break. "Something every week" sounds tiny. That's the point. Even my worst weeks could clear it.
People. Toby at the start, then the people who noticed when I posted my runs and the people who noticed when I didn't.
Slowing down. Most of my running is easy. That's how 18,967 km didn't break me.
Strength work. I avoided the gym for years. Now it's three mornings a week, and my legs, my back and my race times are all grateful.
Finding my time. In 2023, 16% of my runs started before 8am. In 2025 it was 63%. Once running had a fixed slot, it stopped competing with everything else.
A six-week injury used to be my exit door. In 2024 it was just a detour.
Your week one
Every streak starts with week one, and week one is always unimpressive. Mine was a single 8 km run on a Monday in November.
If you want a hand starting yours, that's exactly what I built the PKS Training Club for. Every Monday you make a promise small enough to keep, like "two walks and a run". Every day you log what you did, and a walk counts. And if you go missing, we'll notice. It's the same thing that kept me going, without needing a Toby of your own.
I'm opening 15 founding places at £20 a month, locked in for as long as you stay. Get on the list and you'll be the first to know when the doors open.
Right. Week 261 starts today. See you out there.
Have a great week, folks.
Paul
