10,870 days:
carlisle man's daily running streak
is nearly 30 years long

written by: Nancy Shohet West

Mention streak running and people are apt to snicker, picturing rebels from the early 1970s who dashed naked across sports stadiums and down crowded city blocks.

Those are streakers. A streak runner is something else entirely. As defined by the United States Running Streak Association Inc., streak running is ''running at least one continuous mile within each calendar day under one's own body power. . . ." The key words there are ''within each calendar day."

As Massachusetts' leading streak runner, Ronald Kmiec, 62, of Carlisle holds spot number 13 on the national registry. Kmiec has not missed a day of running since Nov. 28, 1975.

As of today, that would be 10,870 days of running without a day off. In two months, Kmiec expects to celebrate 30 years of consecutive daily runs.

''Stress fractures, severe weather, broken ribs, illnesses," said Kmiec, who speaks with laconic understatement as he described some of the more serious challenges to his running streak. ''I don't mind the heat in the summer, although the bugs can be awful. I ran throughout the Blizzard of '78. The only conditions I really try to avoid are thunderstorms, just because of the danger of lightning. I was out running during Hurricane Bob with trees and power lines falling all around me. I wore a hard hat that day."

After his discharge from the Army, Kmiec read Ken Cooper's seminal book on aerobic exercise, ''Aerobics," in 1968. Over the next few years, he ran occasionally, but began to see the effects of a sedentary profession -- he is a concert pianist and piano teacher who spends most of the day sitting -- as his weight climbed, so he started exercising more frequently. Then one mid-April day in 1972 he was driving home from a lesson at the New England Conservatory when he reached Massachusetts Avenue in the midst of the Boston Marathon. As he paused to watch, he was surprised to see a fellow student from the conservatory heading for the finish line.

''At that point, I set my sights on completing the Boston Marathon," he said.

In 1974, he met that goal -- and has continued to meet it every year since, having now completed 32 consecutive Boston Marathons. Only nine people worldwide have bettered him in that streak. Kmiec is the founder of the Quarter Century Club, for runners who have completed 25 or more consecutive Boston Marathons.

Kmiec stands 6 feet tall. Stern and slender in appearance (he weighs about 155 pounds, he said), his rather formal bearing seems to speak more of his military training and perhaps his many tuxedoed concert appearances than the hundreds of sweaty miles he racks up on country roads every year.

As for his daily running habit, Kmiec said he sees significant parallels between his life as an amateur runner and as a professional musician.

''Running every day is a matter of consistency, discipline, and endurance, which is just what I tell my students about practicing every day. Both require making a plan and sticking to it," he said. A glance at the US Running Streak Association registry (which is maintained on an honor system with the submission of training logs, since there's no practical way for each runner to prove that he or she went out every day) shows that Jan. 1 is the single most popular day for embarking on a streak, but Kmiec said he did not set out on Nov. 28, 1975, with that particular goal. He previously had maintained an 18-month streak that finally broke due to a foot hematoma. It took two weeks to heal, and then he was back out on the road.

''From that day on, I just kept going," he said.

Depending on whether he is preparing for a marathon, Kmiec typically runs from 25 to 40 miles a week, an average he said is unusually low for a distance runner. Although the streak association considers 1 mile the minimum daily distance a streak runner can claim, he saves those short runs for the day after a long race or for drastic situations. And in 30 years, drastic situations have happened more than a few times. The most astonishing one occurred in 1977, early in the streak.

''Back when my wife [Leslie] and I lived in another part of town, we had a next-door neighbor who complained about the noise from my piano students and from my own practicing," he said. Tensions brewed over the course of a year. Then one day, Kmiec was finishing up his daily run when the neighbor assaulted him and inflicted a severe beating. Kmiec's account of the attack was confirmed by Carlisle Police Chief David Galvin, who was an officer at the time.

''I ended up with 54 stitches in my scalp, broken facial bones, and one broken rib." When the next day dawned, he was determined not to let the neighbor's actions break his streak. ''I waited until nighttime and had my wife drive me to a nearby town to run," he said. ''It was a very, very slow mile that night. But my streak went uninterrupted."

There was one day in 1983 when he came within minutes of breaking his streak -- but managed to pull it off thanks to a hungry infant who distracted his wife.

''I thought I was having a heart attack and went to the hospital by ambulance," Kmiec said. ''It turned out not to be a heart attack but a charley horse of the esophagus, so I was released and went home to bed, but I was still really in pain and my wife did not want me to get up. Late that night, our baby woke up and she went into the nursery to feed him. It was 11:50. I sneaked out for my run and had a mile finished by midnight."

Underscoring the reputation of running as a low-tech, low-cost sport, Kmiec said he typically makes each pair of running shoes last over a year.

''I extend the life of my shoes by building up the worn spots with a glue gun and hot-melt glue sticks, contrary to the advice of most podiatrists," he said.

Kmiec acknowledged the pressure his habit has put on family life, especially when their two sons, now in their 20s, were young. ''My wife is the one who really made this possible," he said. ''She deserves far more medals than I do. We've been married over 30 years, which is a kind of streak in itself."

Leslie Kmiec said that her husband's running fixation has required significant adjustments to family life over the years. ''I would say I'm 99 percent supportive of it," she reflected. ''It's part of his personality. He's compulsive about other things, too."

The number-one streak runner on the official listing is a 54-year-old teacher from California who has maintained a 37-year record. Last spring, everyone moved up one notch when the former first-place holder turned 68 and decided to give up his streak. Kmiec said he can't imagine making such an unequivocal decision.

''At this point, I can't see anything stopping me, unless I'm unconscious," he said. He doesn't plan to give up his Boston Marathon streak either. ''I have my sights set on matching the number of finishes Johnny Kelly had: 58. That will take me until I'm 88 years old.

''This is my fountain of youth."

  Published: Boston Globe, September 1, 2005

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