Running News Daily

Canadian Boston Marathon age-grouper shares tips for running as we age

Sandy Rutledge began running in his early 60s; he has run the Boston Marathon four times. The Nova Scotian clocked an impressive 3:31:38 at Monday’s 128th running of the famous race, earning him second place for his division and top Canadian in that age bracket.

“It was a slower than normal Boston, with the heat,” Rutledge told Canadian Running after his race. “I backed it off and went a little slower than last year, because I didn’t want to push it and not finish.”

After a decade of running, Rutledge knows what he needs to do to stay competitive, but above all else, he’s looking at his longevity in the sport. “My goal is to run as long as I can,” he says. “In my 60s, I could run seven days a week and over 100 kilometres per week, but I’ve now backed that off to five days a week and lower volume,” he adds.

Rutledge has completed around 19 marathons and several shorter-distance races. And he has stayed relatively injury-free, thanks to a couple of key regimens that anchor his weekly training.

“I take Tuesdays entirely off running, and I do strength training,” he says, acknowledging that the consistency of these sessions has helped his healthy running streak. “I focus on the core in these… as we age, many people tend to develop back issues, and I’m no exception.”

Rutledge also shared that 20 to 30 minutes of daily stretching, often before his runs, has also played a big role in injury prevention.

As his career in real estate has wound down, Rutledge is grateful to running for helping him keep a daily routine, and a sense of purpose. “I wake up at 5 a.m.–I’m a morning person,” he says. “Running has brought me a sense of youth. I have continued doing most of the things I could do when I was younger, and I think running has done that for me.”

Having taken up running later in life than many other runners, Rutledge encourages anyone to give it a try if they’re curious, no matter their age. “I started really slow,” he says. “It began with walking and then adding in some running slowly… maybe a kilometre to start, and building up from there.”

Rutledge has no plans to slow down. “I’ve heard that most people have a 15-year life cycle in the marathon, and I’m 10 years in,” he says. “I’d like to keep running marathons into my 80s, but as long as I can keeping running five days a week, I’ll adjust the speed and the distances of my races, if I need to.”

Rutledge is looking forward to, hopefully, running the Athens Marathon later this year or next.

“That’s where it all began,” he says of the marathon. “I think we all owe it to the running gods to do that one at least once.”

(04/21/2024) Views: 430 ⚡AMP
by Running Magazine

Canadian Boston Marathon age-grouper shares tips for running as we age

The Halifax runner took up running in his early 60s, and ran his fourth Boston Marathon on Monday.

Sandy Rutledge began running in his early 60s; he has run the Boston Marathon four times. The Nova Scotian clocked an impressive 3:31:38 at Monday’s 128th running of the famous race, earning him second place for his division and top Canadian in that age bracket.

“It was a slower than normal Boston, with the heat,” Rutledge told Canadian Running after his race. “I backed it off and went a little slower than last year, because I didn’t want to push it and not finish.”

After a decade of running, Rutledge knows what he needs to do to stay competitive, but above all else, he’s looking at his longevity in the sport. “My goal is to run as long as I can,” he says. “In my 60s, I could run seven days a week and over 100 kilometres per week, but I’ve now backed that off to five days a week and lower volume,” he adds.

Rutledge has completed around 19 marathons and several shorter-distance races. And he has stayed relatively injury-free, thanks to a couple of key regimens that anchor his weekly training.

“I take Tuesdays entirely off running, and I do strength training,” he says, acknowledging that the consistency of these sessions has helped his healthy running streak. “I focus on the core in these… as we age, many people tend to develop back issues, and I’m no exception.”

Rutledge also shared that 20 to 30 minutes of daily stretching, often before his runs, has also played a big role in injury prevention.

As his career in real estate has wound down, Rutledge is grateful to running for helping him keep a daily routine, and a sense of purpose. “I wake up at 5 a.m.–I’m a morning person,” he says. “Running has brought me a sense of youth. I have continued doing most of the things I could do when I was younger, and I think running has done that for me.”

Having taken up running later in life than many other runners, Rutledge encourages anyone to give it a try if they’re curious, no matter their age. “I started really slow,” he says. “It began with walking and then adding in some running slowly… maybe a kilometre to start, and building up from there.”

Rutledge has no plans to slow down. “I’ve heard that most people have a 15-year life cycle in the marathon, and I’m 10 years in,” he says. “I’d like to keep running marathons into my 80s, but as long as I can keeping running five days a week, I’ll adjust the speed and the distances of my races, if I need to.”

Rutledge is looking forward to, hopefully, running the Athens Marathon later this year or next.

“That’s where it all began,” he says of the marathon. “I think we all owe it to the running gods to do that one at least once.”

(04/20/2024) Views: 418 ⚡AMP
by Claire Haines

Take a Sneak Peek into 'Born to Run 2'

Thirteen years after the publication of Christopher McDougall's popular book, Born to Run, the author teams up with renowned running coach Eric Orton for Born to Run 2: The Ultimate Training Guide, a fully illustrated, practical guide to running for everyone from amateurs to seasoned runners, about how to eat, race, and train like the world's best. Born to Run 2 will be available on December 6, 2022, but you can read this excerpt from the book.

Chapter 8: Form - The Art of Easy

Eric promised he could teach running form in ten minutes. If I had to estimate, I'd guess he was miscalculating by a factor of at least 7,000 percent, so I subjected his proposition to lab testing and gave it a try myself:

I hit Pause and checked my watch. Then I tried it again. Each time, I found Eric's estimate to be wildly exaggerated. It wasn't even close to ten minutes. More like five.

One song. One wall. Three hundred seconds. If someone had only shared this secret with Karma Park, it could have saved her a world of misery.

Karma was such a disaster, the Navy honestly couldn't tell if she was a terrible runner or a terrific actor. How she even made it into boot camp was a mystery.

The strange thing was, running was her only weakness. Chuck her out of a boat at sea? No problem. Pull-ups, push-ups, crunches? Piece of cake. Karma was a competitive swimmer and varsity wrestler growing up, so two-hour workouts were in her blood. But ask her to run a mile and a half? In under thirteen minutes? Not a chance. Over and over she tried, and every time she ended up walking, grabbing her ribs from stitches and wincing from aches in her legs.

"I'm pretty sure the recruiter fudged the numbers on my Physical Readiness Test so she could get me in," Karma believes. "I finished the run and thought, Oh crap, I'm a minute too slow, and she's like, 'No, no, you're good.' "

When Karma got to basic training, she gritted her teeth and did her best. The Navy was her ticket to a dream life, so there was no way she was giving up. Karma was twenty-five at the time, with a wife in law school and hopes of becoming a surgeon. The surest path toward financing their future was a career in the military. Besides, she had a debt to pay back. Karma came to America from South Korea at age eleven, and while, yeah, maybe Alabama wasn't the most welcoming place for a foreign kid with budding gender issues, Karma was still deeply grateful for the life her family was able to create there.

"I really wanted to serve this country," she says. "But in boot camp I was in and out of sick bay all the time." Karma chanted the drill instructors' mottoes to herself-Pain is only skin deep! Heel to toe! Heel to toe!-but the harder she pushed, the more she broke down. "At first maybe they were checking that I wasn't dogging it," Karma recalls. "I can see how I would be suspected because I feel that other recruits faked it to get out of running, but I was in so much pain, they knew something else was going on."

Finally, Navy doctors diagnosed Karma with chronic hip displacement. She was ordered to report to the long-term sick bay, where she'd be stuck for as long as it took-a month, six months, a year-for her to either heal or quit. Those were her options: get better, get faster or get out.

Karma was crushed, but privately vindicated: ever since she was young and her mom would sign the whole family up for local 5Ks as a way of assimilating into their new home, Karma knew she couldn't run. "My dad and I would walk at the back of the pack, and I thought, This is the most ridiculous thing ever. We have cars and bikes, why are we running? I was really fit in all the other aspects of PE, but with running, I tried and tried and never got any better."

Back in civilian life, Karma struggled. She put her own education on hold and began managing a Subway so her wife could finish law school. She began putting on weight, but when she tried to exercise, her old leg injuries flared up and she finally discovered the real cause of her pain was rheumatoid arthritis. The medication made her lethargic and bloated, and her body ached so badly she needed a cane to walk.

Karma was in a bad spiral that nothing could stop. Except her wife's lover.

"My wife had an affair with a guy who was really fit," Karma says. "When I confronted her, she told me I was fat. That hit me really hard." So hard that after she and her wife separated, Karma decided to punish herself with the thing she detested most. "I decided to drown my emotional pain by subjecting myself to physical pain," she says. "When I left the Navy I swore off running-I hate it hate it hate it, never running again. This time, I decided to run myself ragged into an early grave. I hated myself and hated running, so this is what I'll do."

For once, Karma's injuries came to the rescue. Her legs seized up before her heart, and while she was searching for a new way to beat on herself, she had the enormous good luck to meet Sheridan. With that amazing woman by her side, parts of Karma that she hadn't even realized were hurting began to heal. For the first time, she had the confidence and support to face her gender identity and begin transitioning to the self that had always been buried.

She also resolved, once again, to get back into shape.

If you're keeping score at home, by now Karma has struck out three times as a runner. Over the years, I've heard a lot of stories like this from busted ex-runners-and lived one myself-but this is the first instance where I thought, okay, maybe it's time for the mercy rule to kick in and let it go for good. But against those odds, Karma stepped up again. When Sheridan gave birth to their first son, Karma set her jaw and decided their baby wasn't going to grow up with a parent hobbled with a cane or gone before their time.

"That's how I began my journey into learning how to run properly," she says.

This go-round, Karma attacked the problem from a different angle: What if her brain was the problem and not her body? Karma is a math whiz and comes from a medical family, so she was a little annoyed at herself for not realizing sooner that if your equation keeps giving you the wrong result, adding the same numbers isn't going to help. Rather than running harder, she thought, maybe there was a way she could run smarter.

Her eureka! moment occurred soon after, when she noticed that her legs hurt more on downhills than ups. That's when it hit her: What if she treated the entire planet like a hill? Get up on her forefoot, in other words, instead of heel-toe, heel-toeing it like she'd always been told.

"When I mentioned this to a friend, she immediately said, 'Haven't you read Born to Run? That's what it's all about.'"

Karma picked up a copy, and there, on page 181, she found the role model who would change her life. Not Ann Trason, the courageous science teacher who nearly outran a team of Raramuri runners in the Leadville Trail 100. Not Scott Jurek, the gracious and unbreakable hero who rose from a rough Minnesota childhood to become the greatest ultrarunner of all time. Karma didn't even see herself in Jenn Shelton, that patron saint of human fireballs, or Caballo Blanco, the lovelorn loner who used running to heal a broken heart.

Nope. When Karma looked into the mirror, grinning back at her was Barefoot Ted.

I'm not happy about this now, but when Caballo Blanco and I first met Ted McDonald, we were ready to Rock-Paper-Scissors over who was going to clunk him on the head and chuck him into the canyon. Ted likes to say "My life is a controlled explosion," which only confirmed my conviction that he has no idea what "control" means.

I was slow to see what Jenn and Billy Bonehead and Manuel Luna liked about Ted. It took a few clashes before I finally got it, including a toe-to-toe shouting match in the middle of Death Valley, where I threatened to leave Ted by the side of the road to die while he was yelling in my face, "I don't care how big you are! I'll fight you!"-at the very moment, by the way, when we were supposed to be crewing for Luis Escobar in the Badwater Ultramarathon.

But I couldn't miss the fact that lots of other people really enjoy him. Ted is a lot on a slow day, but he's also a huge-hearted friend and his own kind of genius. When I sent word to Ted that a group of my Amish ultrarunning buddies were traveling through Seattle en route to a Ragnar Relay, he immediately threw open the doors of his Luna Sandal shop and made them at home in an improvised bunkhouse. Nearly every year, Ted travels back down to the Copper Canyons and hands a wad of cash to Manuel Luna, the Raramuri artisan who taught him how to make huaraches. Not because they're partners; because they're friends.

Still, it was gratifying to see that Luis had as much steam shooting out of his ears as I did after we invited Ted to join us in Colton for our photo shoot. For forty-eight hours we couldn't get a yes or no out of the guy, which would have been fine if he'd just stayed silent as well. Instead, Luis and I kept getting cryptic little teaser texts, like digital art smiley faces that dissolved from our phones a few seconds after appearing. It felt less like waiting for a friend to show up (or not) and more like being stalked by the Zodiac Killer.

Then lo and behold, an Amtrak train pulls into San Bernardino station and out pops Barefoot Ted, a big Santa Claus backpack full of sandal-making supplies over his shoulder. He'd spent six hours getting there, and immediately began hand-crafting a gorgeous pair of custom sandals for each of our volunteer models. While his hands were busy, so was his mouth: Ted cut loose with a thirty-minute spoken-word performance that left us all slack-jawed in astonishment as he prattled on, fluently and kind of brilliantly, about everything that had been rattling around inside his skull while he was captive on the train. ("Turning everything you see into food is a superpower. Do you have it?" is the only line I remember.) Soon after finishing a dozen sandals he was gone, grabbing a lift back to Santa Barbara that same night because, unbeknown to us, he'd had a pressing commitment there all along. What a guy.

As a runner, Ted was a true revolutionary. He was so far ahead of the pack when it came to minimalism, the rest of the country took years to catch up. Not that he didn't make a compelling argument from the start. It's just that in typical Ted fashion, the story took a direction only a man who calls himself The Monkey would follow.

If you recall, Ted only began running in the first place because he dreamed of becoming America's Anachronistic Ironman. Which meant, for reasons known only to Ted, he wanted to spend his fortieth birthday completing a full triathlon (2.4-mile ocean swim, 112-mile bike ride and 26.2-mile run) but only using gear from the 1890s. If Ted has one quality greater than his raw athleticism it's his absolutely bulletproof self-confidence, so when he found he could handle the swimming and cycling but not the running, the problem couldn't be his body: it had to be the running.

Close: it was actually the running shoes. The first time Ted ran barefoot, his planetary axis shifted. "I was totally amazed at how enjoyable it was," Ted says. "The shoes would cause so much pain, and as soon as I took them off, it was like my feet were fish jumping back into water after being held captive."

On a barefooter's blog, he found the Three Great Truths:

Change the way you run That was the opposite of everything Ted had ever been told about running, but everything Ted had ever been told about running wasn't working. Besides, it immediately made sense. No decent basketball player just heaves the ball in the air and hopes for the best. No serious tennis player slashes their racket around like a club. Ted had spent a few years as a teacher in Japan, and he knew that sushi chefs and martial artists spend years perfecting the basic steps of their craft. In the world of movement, form and technique reign supreme.

Ted didn't know any barefoot runners in person, only online, so he set off on this quest for reinvention on his own. He found himself in the same predicament as a Czech soldier he'd heard about who, during the Second World War, spent his long nights on guard duty dreaming of Olympic glory. Rather than stand and shiver, the soldier began running in place, lifting his knees high to clear the snow and, to avoid being heard, landing as silently as possible in his heavy boots.

Back home after the war, the soldier replaced slippery snow with wet laundry: he washed his clothes by running on top of them in a bathtub full of soap and water. (Get a load of that, Mr. 100 Up: one sloppy stride in a sudsy tub and you're not starting over, you're heading to the emergency room.)

Those weird home experiments paid off spectacularly. Coached only by his own ingenuity, Emil Zatopek pulled off the most stunning track performance in Olympic history: at the 1952 Games, he won gold in all three distance events, including the first marathon he ever attempted. 

Despite how fast he ran, Emil took a ton of crap about how awful he looked. Upstairs, Zatopek was a horror. He'd get this grimace on his face, one sportswriter said, "as if he'd just been stabbed through the heart." Zatopek's head lolled around and his hands clawed his own chest like he was birthing an alien baby through his rib cage. But what sportswriters missed was that below the waist, Zatopek was a machine: rhythmic, precise, impeccable.

Ted never did get around to his Anachronistic Ironman-not yet, at least-but otherwise, he was unstoppable. Once he realized that running was a skill to be mastered and not a punishment to be endured, he became a Monkey on a mission.

Before long, he'd ripped out a marathon quick enough to qualify for Boston, and then ran Boston quick enough to qualify for the next one, and from there it was onward and literally upward, as he shifted from long roads to high-mountain ultramarathons.

But what Karma envied most wasn't Ted's remarkable twenty-five-hour finish at the Leadville Trail 100, or his out-of-left-field world record for skateboarding (242 miles in twenty-four hours). She didn't care if she ever ran as fast as Ted. She just wanted to be as healthy. She wanted to follow his footsteps from Hurt Ted to Happy Ted.

"I made a conscious decision to fully embrace forefoot running," Karma says.

Maybe embrace isn't the right word. Since May 3, 2014, Karma hasn't missed a single day of running. Every evening, no matter what kind of storm is blowing through Birmingham, Alabama, no matter if she's fighting a cold or dealing with craziness at the medical office she manages, Karma pulls on her sandals and heads out the door.

Her eight-year-and-counting streak began in true Barefoot Ted fashion: bizarrely. Less than a year after changing her form, the woman who swore she'd never run again was bringing home her first marathon medal. Gone was the cane, forgotten was the specter of crippling arthritis. By changing the way she moved, Karma discovered she could change the way she felt. She soon ramped up from a marathon to a 50K, and that's when things took off. The day after that first ultramarathon, Karma decided to test her soreness by jogging an easy two miles. She was surprised to find her legs actually felt better after that run, so she went out again the next day and the next and thus a streak was born.

To maintain her daily running streak, Karma logs at least one mile a day, but that's just her baseline. During her first year of streaking she also tackled three ultramarathons, and then began creating streaks within her streak: she ran five miles a day for a full year, seven miles a day for ten months, and three miles a day for 1,300 days. Despite all these clicks on her odometer, Karma still felt she needed to borrow one more hack from Barefoot Ted: as a reminder to remain smooth and light, she always runs in a pair of his Lunas.

Karma had never actually met Ted in person until the day he hopped off the train in San Bernardino and blew into our photo shoot like a grinning bald tornado. Ted is usually quick on his feet, but when he came eye to eye with Karma, it took him a few beats to get his bearings.

The person who'd reached out to Ted years ago had never felt at home in her body and was facing two frightening transformations. The Karma in front of Ted today had made it through to the other end. In the past, Karma had looked to Ted for hope and guidance. Now, she deserved something very different. Ted understood, and delivered.

"If you have any questions, ask Karma," Ted said, as he addressed the circle of very experienced and accomplished ultrarunners hanging on his every word about the art of minimalist running. "She knows as much as I do."

This is an excerpt from Born to Run 2: The Ultimate Training Guide by Christopher McDougall and Eric Orton, available on December 6, 2022 by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright 2022 by Christopher McDougall and Eric Orton.

 

(11/27/2022) Views: 1,056 ⚡AMP
by Trail Runner Magazine

Here’s What Happens to Your Body (and Mind) When You Run Every Day

From your muscles to your mental state, you gain a plethora of benefits from daily runs.

Are you in the midst of a streak and feeling like a different person than when you started? That’s because you are. Running every day triggers a variety of mental and physical benefits, all of which can help improve your athletic performance and make you a healthier human.

“If running or exercise were a pill, it would be the most widely prescribed drug in the world for all of the benefits for your health that it has,” Todd Buckingham, Ph.D., chief exercise physiologist at The Bucking Fit Life, a wellness coaching company and community, tells Runner’s World. “Exercise really is medicine, and running is medicine,” he says. 

If you’re wondering about the effects of your daily dose, here are a list of all the benefits of running every day. Let it fuel you with motivation to keep running toward your run streak goal.

Your Heart Gets Stronger and More Efficient

As a new runner, those first couple of runs can be brutal. Your breathing is labored, and your heart feels like it’s pounding against your chest. Meanwhile, your legs are barely moving. But, a couple of weeks into your training, breathing becomes easier, and that heart-pounding sensation lessens as your feet pick up the pace. 

If you’re wearing a fitness tracker, you may even notice a dip in your heart rate while you hit the same paces. “The heart is a muscle, just like every other muscle in the body. The more that you train it, the stronger it’s going to get,” Buckingham says. 

He explains that running every day strengthens cardiac muscle tissue and causes the heart’s left ventricle, the chamber that forces oxygenated blood into the aorta (the artery that carries blood from the heart to the body), to increase in size. “There’s more space in that left ventricle to fill up with blood,” he says. “So not only is there more blood to be pumped out, but the heart is also stronger, so it can pump more blood out with each beat.”

As a result, your heart doesn’t have to work as hard to deliver oxygenated blood to your muscles. This is a boon for your daily runs and your overall heart health. 

You Gain Muscle Mass and Strength

When you pound the pavement, treadmill, or trail day after day, your muscles—specifically, the glutes, quadriceps, hamstrings, soleus, and gastrocnemius (those last two are your calf muscles)—respond to the stimulus being imposed upon them. 

“The muscle is damaged, and that means that the body has to repair the damaged muscles so that the same run doesn’t have the same effect that it did last time,” Buckingham says. Essentially, the muscles are re-built bigger and stronger. “It’s a lot like lifting weights,” he says. 

But, unless your workouts consist of sprint intervals paired with resistance training, don’t expect to bulk up. Running long distances (even just a mile or more) at a sustainable pace primarily engages type I muscle fibers, which are good at resisting fatigue but are small in size. (Type II fibers, which are quick to fatigue but generate more force and power, are generally responsible for visible muscle growth.) 

“You might see a little bit of increase in [muscle] size with distance running, but it’s not going to be as pronounced. Type I muscle fibers can get bigger, but not to the same extent as those type II fibers,” Buckingham explains. 

Your Connective Tissue (Slowly) Adapts

Your body’s connective tissue, namely the tendons and ligaments, will also adapt to withstand the daily stress of running—just not as quickly as your muscle tissue. “The reason for this is because tendons and ligaments don’t have the same amount of blood flow that the muscles do, so it takes them longer to adapt,” Buckingham says. 

While your muscles may begin to change a couple of weeks into a running streak, it could take three to four months for your tendons and ligaments to catch up, he says. 

To prevent overuse injuries, it’s best to begin a streak with a conservative goal (a mile a day is a good place to start, says Buckingham) and gradually build upon that foundation. The general rule of thumb is to increase your mileage by no more than 10% each week, but Buckingham notes that this can vary depending on the athlete, their experience, and their mileage. 

Avoiding long breaks is helpful for your connective tissues, says Alison Staples, coach at &Running in Howard County, Maryland. “Tendons need to be loaded consistently to learn how to accept the impact of running,” she says. “Running sporadically often leads to injury because we haven’t practiced loading our tendons enough before tacking on mileage.” 

Your Nervous System Becomes Fine-Tuned

Buckingham compares the nervous system to a maze. “The first time you do it, you’re going to take a lot of wrong turns and end up doing extra work,” he says. But, over time, you learn the most direct path from point A to point B. 

Similarly, the first few times you go out for a run, your neuromuscular connections will fire inefficiently, as one nerve fiber connects to multiple muscle fibers. Muscle fibers that don’t need to contract will be stimulated, resulting in wasted energy. However, with consistent running, your nervous system eventually adapts and learns the optimal route so everything works more efficiently.

Research backs this up, too, saying that consistent running trains your central nervous system to adjust to and get more efficient at the commands of running. 

“The more you run, the more efficient you’re going to become [at running] because you're teaching the body which muscle fibers should be firing and which shouldn’t,” Buckingham says. 

You Feel Mentally Sharper

Running boosts circulation, increasing blood flow to the brain and delivering the nutrients you need to think and function. But exercise has also been shown to promote the expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein important to brain function and memory. 

“BDNF actually increases the brain’s ability to form new synapses, or connections, in the brain,” Buckingham says. “This helps with learning and memory. It makes it easier to absorb information and form long-term memories. The more BDNF that somebody has, the more the memory improves in function and capacity.” 

According to Buckingham, the effects of increased BDNF are cumulative, but you may feel mentally sharper and more alert after just a few days of running. 

Your Mood and Motivation Improve

BDNF can also help mitigate stress. “It doesn’t decrease stress hormones, but it does decrease the number of stress receptors,” Buckingham says. “And this could minimize the effect of those stress hormones in the brain.” 

Add that to an exercise-induced endorphin release, and you have a recipe for an improved mood. In fact, research shows just 10 minutes of running can enhance your happiness. 

“I am currently running the #RWRunStreak myself, and based on my own experience, running a mile every day has been a huge boost in my mood and motivation,” Staples says. “My one mile a day is my own form of non-negotiable self-care… And by doing this run streak, I’m certainly more relaxed and motivated to get my run in every day.”

(06/18/2022) Views: 937 ⚡AMP
by Runner’s World

The craziest active streaks in running

On Jan. 29, New Zealand’s Nick Willis ran another sub-4 minute mile at the NYC Millrose Games for the 20th consecutive year. This achievement is something only a few runners have come close to, which has sparked us to find the craziest active running streaks.

Nick Willis – 20 years of sub-4 minute miles

Willis first ran sub-4 during his undergrad at the University of Michigan in 2003 (3:58.15). At last weekend’s Millrose Games, Willis broke four minutes for the 63rd time in his career (3:59.71), which marked the 20th consecutive year he has run sub-4 miles. Willis is New Zealand’s only two-time Olympic medallist in the 1,500 metres, winning a silver medal in Beijing and bronze in Rio. In 2020, Willis passed his countryman, Sir John Walker, who previously held the consecutive sub-4 mile record of 18 years.

Simon Laporte – 46 years of running every day

At 46 years, the Notre-Dame des Prairies, Que. runner holds the longest active run streak in Canada. Laporte began his streak on Nov. 27, 1975, and hasn’t missed a day since. The 70-year-old run streaker has no plans to stop anytime soon, and he is planning for his streak to reach 50 in 2025. The longest active streak in the world is held by Jon Sutherland of Utah. Sutherland’s run streak of 52.7 years recently passed the legendary record set by Ron Hill (52.1) last year.

Streak Runners International (SRI) says for runs to qualify as a streak, they must cover at least one mile (1.61 kilometres) each day. The run may occur on the road, track, trails, or treadmill, but a minimum of one mile must be completed.

Lois Bastien – 41.8 years of running every day

Bastien holds the longest-standing women’s run streak record, at 42 years. She is now 79 and still runs every day in her home state of Florida.

Ben Beach – 54 consecutive Boston Marathons

Although Beach does not have the record for most Boston Marathon finishes (58), the 72-year-old marathoner does have the record for most consecutive Boston Marathons (54). Beach ran his first Boston in 1967 when he was 18. This year, Beach completed his 54th consecutive Boston Marathon, finishing in 5:47:27.

Allyson Felix – Five straight Olympic Games with a medal in track and field 

U.S. sprinter Allyson Felix is one of the greatest female Olympians ever. She has not only represented her country at five straight Olympic Games, but she has also medalled at all of them (seven gold, three silver and one bronze) – a feat that no other female athlete has accomplished in track and field. Although Felix intended that Tokyo would be her last Olympics, her streak will remain active until Paris 2024, where Jamaican sprinter Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce will get the chance to equal her at five consecutive Olympics with a medal.

Karl Meltzer – a 20-year streak of winning a 100-mile race

Meltzer, 54, has been on the elite ultramarathon scene for more than 20 years. With his most recent win this year at the Beast of the East 100-miler, he has won a 100-miler for 20 consecutive years, bringing his career total to 45 wins over 100 miles. This is an unprecedented number, and the only person who can top it (for now, at least) is Meltzer himself.

(02/05/2022) Views: 1,048 ⚡AMP
by Running Magazine

Bill Anderson ran at least one mile every day for over 44 years has passed away

Bill Anderson has passed away.  He has been fighting prostate cancer since 1999.

"He was a fighter," says his brother Bob Anderson (director of My Best Runs).  "I know he would be proud to know that he was able to run a mile just ten days before his death.  R.I.P. The world will miss you."  

In 2018 he shared his secrets with MBR.  Bill Anderson (72) started his running streak on September 27, 1976 in Fort Worth Texas. He has run at least one mile everyday since then. He is currently number ten on the Official USA Active Running Streak List.

"My brother Bill has never been injured," says Bob Anderson. Asked why he has never been injured he says, "Shoes are the hidden secret to avoid injuries. I make sure they are always fresh," Bill says.

"Secondly I always run within my capacity. Thirdly, I make sure I enjoy every run. Fourth, I know myself well enough to anticipate a potential issue before it happens."

His daughter (Barb) posted this on FB on December 23, 2020.  

“The Streak has ended…

My dad did not do something yesterday that he’d done the past 16,000 + days – he did not go run at least one mile.

On September 27, 1976, he went for a run…I was 2 years old.  He continued that for 44 years, 2 months and 25 days and ended his running career with the 10th longest documented running streak in the United States.

The rules?  At least one mile, outside, in running shoes.

At some point the streak became another family member that we’ve all formed a complicated relationship with, especially my mom, who has worried about him, followed him in the car in the hail or after a little too much to drink, cursed the inconvenience of the “damn streak” on occasion and supported him every day. 

When I was in high school, I started running with him.  The first time I ran four miles, I was with my dad and we had about a third of a mile to go, all uphill.  I was ready to quit when he calmly said, “At this point it’s really just a matter of one’s character.”  I didn’t stop.

I’ve run with him numerous distances, in numerous locations, sometimes in formal races and sometime just around the hood. But my dad’s run in every state, dozens of countries and incredible ranges of temperatures and weather conditions, juggling time zones, international date lines, snow, wind, rain, prostate cancer surgeries, bladder cancer, Parkinson’s, nine chemo cycles, a ruptured appendix and age. 

On Monday the 21st my mom practically pushed him out the front door and followed him in the car one last time, this time for concern of his mental acuity.  

I ran with him on Tuesday the 22nd, not knowing but somehow feeling the final curtain call.  We reminisced about our most memorable runs together – like the one time, a very low-to-the-ground bulldog joined us from nowhere and ran at least a mile right between us.  We both thought that dog would go into cardiac arrest.  At some point he bailed on us but when we got back to the house, we jumped in the car to try and find him because we were convinced that he was dead, lost or both.  We never did find him. 

On Wednesday the 23rd after being rushed to the hospital, he announced with dignity, strength and no regret, that the streak was over. 

He made the right decision.  But I can’t help feeling like we lost a family member yesterday.  

My dad has always been my hero.  Dad, today I went for a run and even though I cried through half of it, I ran with new purpose and I crushed it.  I love you.”

Click on link (the title) to listen to Bill talk about his streak.  

(01/04/2021) Views: 1,773 ⚡AMP

75 year-old, Jim Pearson has run at least a mile every day for 50 years and he won´t stop doing it

The lead story in The Seattle Times on Feb. 15, 1970, was headlined, “Nixon bans war toxins.” In sports, the banner trumpeted that the Seattle Pilots were dropping the price of their field box seats for 1970 from $6 to $4.50 – though it became a moot point when the Pilots moved to Milwaukee six weeks later.

One other event that day, however, went unnoted in the news. Jim Pearson, the cross-country coach at Ferndale High School, didn’t go for a run.

The world has changed in myriad ways in the ensuing half-century, but there has been one constant. Through rainstorms and blizzards, floods and Nor’westers, surgeries and illness, and now through a worldwide pandemic, Pearson has run every day since.

That’s 50 years, 40 days and counting for the 75-year-old Pearson, now hunkered down in Marysville. Hunkered, that is, except for his daily peregrination in Adidas, a welcome diversion in our shelter-in-place existence.

Put another way, it’s 18,304 straight days of running at least a mile, which is the minimum requirement for an officially recognized running streak (but Pearson, a former national record-holder at 50 miles, almost never runs that short a distance). Put yet another way, it’s 176,926 total miles, up to and including Pearson’s 2½-mile run on Friday.

It’s the second-longest active streak in the country, 266 days behind the 18,570 of 69-year-old Jon Sutherland of West Hills, Calif. Pearson says with mock indignation, “Every day I run, and I haven’t gained a day on him.”

But everyone else in the country, and probably the world, is behind these two ironmen, as compiled by the Streak Runners International Inc. and United States Running Streak Association, Inc. Their registry is all based on the honor system, but Pearson has 50 years-plus of log books and running diaries to back him up.

“I’ve always said the first 100 days are the hardest on this streak stuff,’’ said Pearson. “People say, ‘Oh, you’re amazing.’ No, I’m not. People who can do one year, that’s amazing. How do you run every day for a year? But once you’ve done that, it’s something you just do.”

Pearson is duly grateful that running is an activity that can be maintained through the coronavirus quarantining – with proper social distancing, of course. It’s just one of numerous challenges Pearson has faced to keep his streak alive since his summer coach with the Everett Elks track team, Keith Gilbertson Sr., implored Pearson to get more consistent with his running.

Running became a way of life in the Pearson family. All three of his children, two boys and a girl, put together run streaks that stretched into multiple years. Barbie, his wife, didn’t run, but she told Jim when they were married, “I won’t interfere with your running.”

 

(03/30/2020) Views: 1,644 ⚡AMP
by Larry Stone

Tim Osberg running streak is approaching 33 years and he has no plans of stopping soon

Dr Tim Osberg, a Niagara University professor has not missed a day of running for 33 years.  Tim was 29 when he began his running streak.  He runs at least two miles every single day. And he will keep the streak going no matter where he is, or the weather conditions outside. "The weather I hate the most is the November rain," he said. He's lived in New York the entire time, and the weather isn't always conducive to the sport he loves.  He says working out is easier with a streak because you're not fighting to do the daily run, it's just a given. And he has no plans on stopping anytime soon. Dr. Tim Osberg joined the faculty of Niagara in September of 1982. He teaches courses in introductory psychology, abnormal psychology, clinical psychology, and psychological assessment...  The official definition of a running streak, as adopted by the Streak Runners International, Inc., and United States Running Streak Association, Inc., is to run at least one mile (1.61 kilometers) within each calendar day. Running may occur on either the roads, a track, over hill and dale, or on a treadmill.  Tim's "official streak" started June 24, 2011 as listed on the official record keeping site but he has been running dailly for nearly 33 years. (06/21/2018) Views: 2,823 ⚡AMP

Bill Anderson's secrets for Running Injury Free for Over 41 years

Bill Anderson (72) started his running streak on September 27, 1976 in Fort Worth Texas. He has run at least one mile everyday since then. He is currently number nine on the Official USA Active Running Streak List.

"My brother Bill has never been injured," says Bob Anderson. Asked why he has never been injured he says, "Shoes are the hidden secret to avoid injuries. I make sure they are always fresh," Bill says.

"Secondly I always run within my capacity. Thirdly, I make sure I enjoy every run. Fourth, I know myself well enough to anticipate a potential issue before it happens."

(02/07/2018) Views: 5,095 ⚡AMP
Training

What is the World's Longest Running Streak?

MBR FAST FACT: After running at least a mile a day for 19,032 days, running legend Ron Hill finally took a day off on Jan 31, 2017. Hill became the first Briton to win the Boston Marathon, setting a then-course record at 2:10:30. He also competed in the 1964, 1968 and 1972 Olympics, placing sixth in the 1972 marathon. He has also held world records for 10-mile, 15-mile and 25-kilometer road races. Hill has completed 115 marathons, the last of which he ran in 1996, his final Boston Marathon. (12/24/2017) Views: 2,062 ⚡AMP

Jon Sutherland Started His Running Streak in 1969

MRB FAST FACT: Jon Sutherland (67) started his running streak May 26,1969. As of today he has run at least one mile for 17,732 days (48.55 years). He established the American consecutive-days record three years ago, when he eclipsed the mark of 45 years set by his former cross-country teammate Mark Covert. “It was Mark who inspired me to begin this. I always looked up to him—and at his back during races—and he told me in 1969 that he had run every day for a year. So I thought, Why not?” (12/11/2017) Views: 1,929 ⚡AMP