Why an Iowa man has taken a run every day for 41 years, and counting

Once, he ran from a mama bear in northern Minnesota. He heard her footfalls for 10 seconds but didn't look back. John Liepa was happy to survive, certainly, but happier to run the fastest mile in his life.

Another time he was in Russia near the Chechen border when he was told people were being snatched for ransom. Yeah, well, he needed to get in a run.

He often changed into running shorts at an airport because of a long layover. He once dodged a tornado and ran through a full-on blizzard.

Liepa, 73, has taken a run every single day for 41 years — 15,042 straight days as of last Friday, when we caught up with him jogging down the trail at Raccoon River Park in West Des Moines. A few light snowflakes were falling, not even a minor bother to a man who has run daily since Jan. 2, 1977, the 10th-longest streak in the nation, according to the United States Running Streak Association.

The closest call to ending the streak had to be a half-dozen years ago. He got the bad news from doctors at a West Des Moines hospital that he needed to stay overnight for observation because of some high blood pressure readings. He convinced the hospital staff to let him run. A minute after midnight, Liepa took eight hallway laps to put in a mile.

“I had to be creative,” he said, to keep the streak going.

Liepa, a retired college history professor, is of sound mind. His mind works so fast that his gray mustache jumps while talking during the course of a 41-minute, 38-second interview that covered an entire lifetime of running.

You want numbers, the hallowed context of runners?

Liepa has run nearly 125,000 miles, or more than five times around the planet. He has run 18 marathons and 250 road races, and those make him proud. But he knows what makes him special is this streak.

His running life started at Iowa State University. He was a back for the Iowa State University Rugby Club in 1970 when his cleat stuck in the dirt and the ligaments in his knee tore. The six months of rehabilitation changed his life.

His left leg was beginning to atrophy, so he was determined to build it back up by running. He found out he liked it and soon helped organize the Iowa Prairie Track Club in Ames. In 1974, he invited Joe Henderson, an Iowa native who was then an editor at Runner’s World Magazine, to speak to the running club.

IOWA STORIES:

Historic Okoboji inn's demolition stirs emotions

All of Iowa high school class is still alive after 60 years in unlikely feat

Iowan finds solace in dogs that lead her in Iditarod

Henderson told the group to think of a run as a daily routine as normal as sleeping, eating or breathing.

“It’s never a question of if you run, but only how good it’ll be that day,” Henderson told them.

Liepa took his advice. You don't question if you are going to eat today. You just do it.

He started to run every single day. Two and a half years passed in a blink. He hadn’t considered that he never missed a day, so when he was hung over after a New Year’s Eve party, he said, “Screw it, I’m not running today.”

He thinks about Jan. 1, 1977, a lot now. “If I hadn’t taken that day off…” he says, he would rise a few places on the list, though a long distance from No. 1.

Jon Sutherland of California has run every day since May 26, 1969.

On Jan. 2, 1977, Liepa laced up his running shoes again and ran, and ran, and never stopped running.

For perspective, Jimmy Carter was soon to take the oath of office, and the first “Star Wars” film was about to be released. Liepa's son was 6 months old. He and his wife, Dianne, would have a daughter five years later, and he had to sandwich a run around labor and delivery.

They would all head off into the runner’s sunrise. He and Dianne won a husband-wife marathon in Canada. His son and daughter would become marathoners, while Liepa also drove hard into the world of competition with zeal for close to 25 years.

His highlight reel would include his personal record of 2:41.17 in the 1979 Boston Marathon but also getting others involved in running as a race director of events such as Midnight Madness in Ames. It was all about pushing the times, the participation, the limits.

Then something happened about 15 years ago. He began to realize that a nice run at a pace of nine minutes a mile or so, covering two to five miles, was a gift.

He realized that during all those years he wasn’t just checking his pace but pondering answers to life’s work and relationships or simply freedom from the daily grind.

“That was my time,” he said.

He took in the surroundings more. The deer and turkeys just lazily gazed upon him along his favorite run at Lake Ahquabi State Park near Indianola, where he lived before moving to West Des Moines. He had become such a familiar part of the landscape he even accidentally brushed into a deer.

On that trail, he once fell and tumbled to his knees but managed to finish the run.

The baseball history enthusiast remembered the great Satchel Paige’s quote: “Don’t look back, something might be gaining on you.”

He ran the next day, and the next, often wearing his Yankees ballcap. He ran in Italy and Russia and Germany. He ran in rain, and he ran in snow. He ran in searing heat, and he ran from a bear. He ran with a fever and that damaged leg.

And before he knew it, around the turn of the millennium when the United States Running Streak Association began compiling a list of streak runners, he realized just how unusual he was.

Mark Washburne of New Jersey, the association’s president, says the runs are verified by runners' log books or confirmation by people who know them. A minimum of one mile daily is required to keep the streak going. He dismisses the idea that maybe some people shouldn’t run every day and give their body a rest.

“It’s about being consistent,” Washburne said. “It’s 10 to 12 minutes of your life, so I don’t think it’s a big deal.”

Liepa’s wife Dianne has some reservations.

“Sometimes I think he should just run and not worry about the streak anymore,” she said. “I worry that he will trip or get hit by a car, and I think that he would really be depressed because he didn’t quit on his own terms.”

Liepa said he is not obsessed with the streak but is quite aware of those on the list, including Des Moines’ Ralph Edwards, the next-highest ranked Iowan at No. 113. And he knows well the stories of others, including two men whose streak ended in recent years, “one who was hit by a car and another by respiratory failure,” which moved Liepa up the list.

“I’d have to get hit in the kneecap by a garbage truck before I quit running,” he said.

It’s like eating and sleeping. He just keeps running, knowing some days will be good and others bad.

“A pretty good life philosophy,” he says.

Liepa was barely breathing hard last Friday after a three-mile run, a light jog that occasionally now slows to a walk.

The lake was at his side, newly free of ice, and the trees were swaying in an early spring wind. He had an epiphany in recent months, reviewing those 41 years of running.

He realized that he did all this running in quiet places of beauty, in parks and cemeteries, on trails and country roads. The woods around him were alive.

“We sense it, smell it, hear it, every time we set out for a run,” he said. “They dictate to us how we need to adapt to their changing seasons.”

He didn’t look back heading down the trail as the snow stopped. He just took a slower pace and went forward one foot, and one day, at a time.