40^th Anniversary Speech

By Steve DeBoer

Thanks everyone for braving this inferno. I‘ve been told it would have to be a hot day in Hades before I would reach 40 years of daily runs. Make that the hottest day in Rochester this year! The high of 101 degrees is the warmest here since July 31, 1988 – at least it has dropped into the 90s for the run. It was June 7, 1971, I ran home 2 miles from the Hamline University Fieldhouse about noon. I can’t say it was a special run, as I had been running daily for over 10 months, but sometimes I ran less than 1 mile that first year.

I admit I ran this morning but this will be my first run since I passed the 40 year mark , now being after noon. That makes me the 5^th person in the US and probably the world who has run daily this long. The longest we know of in Canada is 32 ½ years. Ron Hill in England reached 46 years last December but ran less than 1 mile a few times. The 4 ahead of me, Mark Covert, Jon Sutherland, Jim Pearson and Ken Young all live on the West Coast and are all over age 60. So, if I can exercise regularly, maintain a healthy weight, not smoke and make healthy dietary choices, I might have a chance of outlasting 1 or 2 of them.

Rochester is the home of streak running in Minnesota. Bruce Mortenson is coaching a track team this evening up in the Cities and sent his regrets, but he began his first running streak January 1970, while living here. He had 4 streaks longer than one year, 2 in Rochester. I lived in St. Paul when I began streaking, as did my brother, Dave, who ran daily from 1972 to 1978. The 4^th streak runner in MN was Steve Gathje, also of Rochester. He has kept running daily and is now #10 on the US Running Streak Association active registered streak list, and will reach 39 years in September. He also sent his regrets, as he just started a new job in the Cities yesterday.

Currently there are 12 Minnesotans who have an active streak. Julie Maxwell is with us today from Kasson. This is the first we have met. Julie will reach 33 years of daily runs on July 5^th. She is #29 on the list and has the longest running streak for a woman. Paul Christian of Rochester will reach 27 years in September and is #68. He just returned from a trip in Tanzania and sends his regrets. Pete Gilman runs a little faster than most of us, having run the 2008 Olympic Trails marathon and is now at #166, running daily since November 2005. Jeff Judd plans to reach 2 years next month and is #257.

Steve Morrow from the Mankato area had a streak of 28 years 9 months broken last May. He recently reached the 1 year mark of his second streak, in 276^th place. There have been streak runners in 47 states (none yet in Rhode Island, New Mexico or Alaska). Though this is the first Steve and I have met, we are the only streak runners to have lived in South Dakota in the 1980s. I just learned that Steve and I both ran the Guiseppi’s half-marathon here in 1995

Brad Kautz began his first running streak in 1986. It and his subsequent 5 additional streaks didn’t last for a variety of reasons. I hear he has began another one. He was also present at the Chester Woods Trail race in June 2007, when I stepped in a gopher hole, broke my ankle, and thought the streak was over. Brad drove me to the ER and heard the doctor tell me “weight bearing as tolerated”. So I decided to tolerate a 1-mile run the next morning after taping up my ankle.

Though California, has the most active streak runners (30), Minnesota has the highest percentage on a population basis (just over 2 per million) and Rochester has the highest percentage in a town over 10,000 population – Jeff, Pete, Paul and me, or 40 per million.

Again, thanks to all in attendance and thanks to KAAL TV for their coverage of the event. Now let’s cover a lap on the track to get this underway.