For more than 40 years, Paul Olden has been a booming voice you hear in stadiums across the country. Now 64, his resume includes working 12 consecutive Super Bowls and for the past 10 years he has been the public address announcer for the New York Yankees—and he hasn’t missed a game. It’s consistency, he says, that’s gotten him so far as a sports broadcaster.

It’s also consistency that has taken him on another journey over the past few years as a runner. He says only by following a dedicated regimen each day can he handle the grind of the late-night sports schedule while still having time for his latest passion—keeping his run streak of one mile per day alive.

Olden’s typical process begins about three hours before the first pitch is thrown at Yankee Stadium, which on this July 3 night is scheduled for 7:05 p.m. He leaves his apartment in Brooklyn and heads to the subway. He moves briskly, knowing that even with a crosswalk signal counting down to zero, he’ll have the leg speed to beat traffic. Once he enters the subway station, he buys a copy of the Daily News (“I won’t get the Post!”) for his 45-minute ride. After flipping through quietly on the crowded train, he hands it off to a stranger as he leaves.



Olden, wearing a white Yankees baseball tee that shows off defined biceps and a grey Yankees hat with running shades resting atop, enters the Yankees press box two hours before the game starts in the Bronx. This gives him time to set up his solo announcing booth that overlooks home plate, make edits to the nightly scripts to provide the right emphasis (“Let’s give a warrrmmmm ovation for LINC and all it does to increase LITERACY in Newww…York… Cityyy!”), and double check pronunciations of names on the opposing roster. He lays out his snacks of choice for between pitches—bananas, Nuun for his water, , kale chips given to him by a Yankees fan, a vitamin C pack—and heads to the media dining area. Olden builds his vegan pregame meal of rice, sauerkraut, pasta, and green beans. He'll follow that later with his usual 7th-inning salad.

He reads off the starting lineups and intros the ceremonial first pitcher, then the nine innings go by like clockwork. Aroldis Chapman closes out the 8-5 win over the Atlanta Braves for the pinstripes around 11 p.m. on this weeknight. The game concludes, but Olden’s day is far from over.

Run No. 585 has to be completed in a few short hours.

When most people are sound asleep, Olden is traveling home to prep for a run. In early July, he’s approaching 600 consecutive days of running, and any alteration in his routine could mean the end of the other thing in his life he’s completely dedicated to.



“As a runner, I’m pretty methodical,” Olden says. “I think that can be transferred to describe my announcing style as well. Methodical and consistent.”



Just like it’s second nature for Olden to pronounce every name right to rev up the crowd with a subtle inflection (“Batting second…NUMMMBER NINE-DEE-NINNNEEE!…Aaaa-ron Judge! Nummmber ninety-nine…), he’s just as focused at keeping his streak alive.

The tally is impressive when you consider Olden only started running consistently again when he turned 60. He was a recreational runner off and on after running track and cross country at Dorsey High School in Los Angeles. He says he never placed for his team, and that memory kept him from ever signing up for a local 5K as an adult.

“We would go to a dusty park for our cross-country meets every week, and since I was usually at the back of the pack, I swallowed a lot of dust,” he says. “I had allergy problems, and because of that I often went to school only four days a week because the Friday after Thursday meets I was a basket case with my sneezing and sniffling.”

Yet as Olden built his career in broadcasting—working television for the Yankees in the mid-1990s for WPIX, then moving to public address announcing for teams like the Tampa Bay Rays and Los Angeles Dodgers before getting the call back to the Bronx—he never stopped following running. And a few years after taking over the PA booth from legendary Yankees announcer Bob Sheppard—who worked for the Yankees until he retired at 99 years old in 2009—Olden realized he had to do something to stay in shape for such a prestigious role.

That’s when running came back to Olden.



Before any ideas of a run streak started, however, Olden said he just wanted to get the burden of a race off his back. At his offseason home in St. Petersburg, Florida, he entered his first 5K since high school—the Firestone 5K in 2015. He says he wore a bulky backpack for the duration of the race because he didn’t know where else to put it. He said it took him 32 minutes and 16 seconds to complete the 3.1 miles, and the strain of the bag left him sore the next day.

I don’t know if I’m going to be around as long as Bob [Sheppard] or work as long as he did, but I certainly want to be in good shape and healthy.

“But I wasn’t sore to the point where I said I wasn’t going to run anymore,” he says. “I started getting back into it and training a little better.”

As he trained more consistently, he naturally got better, even becoming a podium competitor in his 60-64 age group. “I was given this infusion of enthusiasm for running because I was finishing first, second, or third in my age group,” he said. When he did the same Firestone 5K a year later, he lopped nearly nine minutes off his time.

And because Olden has that meticulous mindset for details, he quickly became fascinated by streaks where people run at least one mile a day. Some people have streaks that stretch on for decades, so he figured he could attempt a Dimaggio-esque streak by attempting to run for a year.

Late in 2015, Olden started his first streak, and it lasted 326 days. He injured himself from running too much and without a plan, but that gave him incentive to start a new one in November of 2016.

Paul Olden during a nightly run to Brooklyn Bridge Park. Christian Rodriguez

After hearing thousands of screaming fans for hours and the hubbub of a post-game subway ride, Olden changes into his workout gear. Seemingly always in uniform, he’s switched to a tech Yankees tee. Then popping in headphones to play his running mix from Spotify, he heads back to the street to get his run in.

The night runs are almost a necessity for him—the streets are less crowded and he hates running in the heat—but the baseball lifestyle also means you’ll be working late hours. According his MapMyRun app, he logged a muggy 2.86-mile run over 22 minutes and 41 seconds, essentially an out and back to Brooklyn Bridge Park. With the nearly 1 a.m. start, he didn’t see a single runner.

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“When I started running the other night, someone was coming home from work and said, ‘You’re running now?’” Olden said. “She thought it was great, but you hardly ever get support this time at night.”



Olden remains focused on fighting old age with even more than his running streak. In February, he decided to begin a pushup streak where he cranks out at least 100 a night. He’s added about of dozen minutes of jump rope to his routine, often while in an empty gym with a small orange Bose Bluetooth speaker playing favorite songs, like “Mexican Radio” by Wall of Voodoo.

Christian Rodriguez

And before he winds down his day with a late-night meal as SportsCenter blares in the background, he must make the tally for the day’s run on his (of course) Yankees calendar. It’s day No. 585, and a blue marker fills in the white away game boxes on the calendar, a silver marker for the navy filled boxes.

The grind isn’t difficult, because he tells himself at most it’s only 10 to 20 minutes out of his life to do those few miles each day. Like his connection with baseball and sports, running is now a part of his daily routine.

“I’m hoping to be around,” he says. “I don’t know if I’m going to be around as long as Bob [Sheppard] or work as long as he did, but I certainly want to be in good shape and healthy. That’s why I’m working so hard now.

On July 19, Paul Olden reached 600 days in a row of running at least one mile a day.