Today marks day 2066 of my daily run streak. That's over 5.5 years without missing a single day, and it's brought me to 15,967.11km of the 40,075km I need to complete a lap of the world on foot, barefoot-style, to raise £1m for children's causes including Great Ormond Street and BBC Children in Need. I've got 24,107.89km left to go.

I want to talk today about something that doesn't get discussed much among run streak runners: the lengths we go to when life threatens to break the streak. Because it isn't always about the running itself. Sometimes it's about the planning around it.

I'm travelling tomorrow. Early flight, pickup at 4:30am. On the surface that sounds manageable. But I've learned the hard way that travel days are the highest-risk days for a streak runner, and I made a mistake once that I've never repeated.

A while back I travelled without running first, assuming I'd get my run done at the other end. The flight was delayed. We landed at half past eleven at night. I had to go straight out and run in an unfamiliar place, in the dark, just to get the day banked before midnight. I made it, but the stress and anxiety of nearly losing 5.5 years of consecutive days over a flight delay was horrendous. I told myself that day I'd never let it happen again.

So now, whenever I travel, I do what I call back-to-back running. I run once in the early evening, then again just after midnight, before I've even been to bed. Two runs within a few hours of each other, minimal recovery between them, purely so that whatever happens with the flight the next day, even a 24-hour delay, I've already secured the day before I left the house.

Today that looked like a 5km run at half past five in the evening, then a second 5km just after midnight, before getting picked up for the airport at 4:30am. Not much sleep in between. Not much recovery either.

Here's the part that makes this one harder than usual. I'm currently on the rehabilitation curve from a broken foot. My minimum distance right now is 5km, purely because I don't yet have the confidence in my foot to push further. Back-to-back running is tough on a body at full fitness. It's a different proposition entirely when you're trying to protect a foot that broke once already and you're desperate not to let it happen again. Every step tonight was about control, not performance. Getting the distance done without adding load I couldn't afford.

What strikes me, reflecting on this, is how protective you become of a streak once it's been running for years. It stops being about today's run and starts being about the accumulated weight of everything that's come before it. Miss one day and it isn't just today you lose, it's the meaning attached to 2066 consecutive days of showing up. I sometimes describe it as a strange kind of addiction, not in a healthy sense, but in the sense that once something is that deeply reinforced, you'll go to extreme lengths to keep it intact.

The lesson I keep coming back to is one about removing risk before it becomes a crisis. I could have waited and hoped tomorrow's flight ran on time. Instead I did the harder thing tonight, twice, so that tomorrow has no power to break what I've built. That's not a running lesson exclusively. It applies to anything you're trying to build with consistency over a long timeline. You don't wait for the risk to appear and then react to it. You look ahead, see where the streak is exposed, and you close that gap yourself, even if it costs you sleep.

I won't pretend this is comfortable. Recovering from injury, running twice in a matter of hours, knowing there's an early flight and very little rest before it, isn't something I'd recommend to anyone chasing an easy life. But that's rarely what a 16.5-year mission looks like day to day. It looks like uncomfortable decisions made quietly, without an audience, because the audience isn't really the point. The point is the children this mission exists for, and every kilometre only means something if the streak stays unbroken long enough to reach 40,075km.

I'll be back tomorrow with part two of this, recorded after the midnight run, to talk through how it actually felt in the moment rather than how it sounds explained after the fact. There's a difference between describing a hard night and living through one, and I think that difference is worth sharing honestly.

If this mission means something to you, the way to help is simple: follow along, share it with someone who might care, and if you're able, support the fundraising. Every person who sees this brings the target closer, and the target was never really about me.

Watch the full episode: https://youtu.be/HVEQfnWhM2E