Obviously, this person is a real runner. This person must run marathons and ultramarathons like me, perhaps a running soul mate.

After an hour of running, the treadmill comes to a stop and must be restarted. Iam concentrating on restarting and getting back into the groove and notice the person next to me is similarly engaged. No time to pee. We continue running. Now it is a matter of pride. I will not stop until this person next to me stops. I run harder and faster. The person beside me responds. We have a competition. Fun. Iam sweating and having a grand workout.

Finally after an hour and 50 minutes, I must stop and run down to the bathroom. I stop quickly and jump off the treadmill (not an excellent idea, by the way) and stagger and reel away. I turn to glance at my training partner, and I see a huge square pillar with giant mirrors on all four sides.

The partner is me! The person beside me is me. I’ve been

admiring myself. I have been running against myself. “

Boy, I feel pretty stupid! I start to laugh and barely make it to the bathroom. I have never laughed so hard at myself! I stagger back upstairs to finish my three hours. Now I have the giggles. The remaining hour of running is just not the same now that Iknow my running partner is only me. I finish the three hours and get to laugh about the situation for days.

Now I tell people I met a new friend at the gym, and she was the imA Revealing Look at a Streaker

Streakers Bare Their Souls Every Single Day.

sst! Hey! Hey you! Psst, yeah, you. Come over here. Shhhhh! Hurry! Let me ask you something. Have you ever talked to a streaker before? Ever see one in action? Ever get to know one? Do you wonder: What does it feel like? Is it exhilarating? What kind of person would allow himself to become one? Why must streakers go against what’s generally accepted as normal behavior? When you see them from a distance, you look closely, and you wonder, are they nuts?

I’ll be up front with you; I’ve got nothing to hide. I’m a streaker, have been

hurt anyone. It usually feels good. At first it felt strange. I worried: What kind of problems is this going to cause? Will I get hurt? Yet, the longer I did it, the more I liked it. Trust me; I’m not the only one around here who’s into this. There are plenty of others. Quite frankly, I think most everyone should try it. Why not? Are you surprised to hear this? Hey, keep your clothes on. It’s not really that unusual; actually it’s a natural high.

I mean, why not become a streaker and run every day of the week, every day of the month, 365 days a year? After all, streakers peel away the general adage that a body needs one or preferably two days off a week to heal. If streakers crosstrain, they do it along with, not in place of, their daily mileage. Sure, this butts up against the general body of knowledge. Are they less of a runner because of it? The naked truth is that I don’t know, but does anyone know? Do streakers injure themselves more often; are they sick more frequently than nonstreakers? Probably not, or they wouldn’t be able to maintain their streaks. My hunch is that streakers incur far fewer injuries than nonstreakers over comparable weekly distances.

I don’t have any hard data to support this claim; all I have is intuition and reasoning such as this: A streaker is like a car. It performs better if it runs every day; let it set idle for a while, and it takes longer for its engine to turn. Keep it at home for a few weeks, and it’s really tough to get it going. It might even need some type of jump-start. In a way, a person’s joints, ligaments, muscles, and cardiovascular system are similar to a car’s seals, gaskets, electrical wiring, hydraulics, and

Running streaker Steve Lerner set to expose himself to the faded light of another day.

lubrication systems. This isn’t to say that a car performs better and lasts longer if it is driven fast and over long distances every day. No, not at all! On most days, three, four, or five miles will do just fine, although a long drive once a week provides even more benefit. And every once in a while, it’s advantageous to crank up its speed, busting loose the carbon from its cylinders. Streakers, like owners of high-end cars, stay carefully attuned to subtle nuances in performance. They instinctively know when to ease off and when they can extract higher levels of effort.

Photo by Adam Lemer

Even more important than the biomechanics of running every day are the psychological effects. We sleep and eat every day. Our bodies don’t seem to mind. I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a total day of fasting or a complete day off from sleeping. Why should our running routine be any different?

On a busy day when time is short, most Americans need the exercise more than the food. And besides, consistency is the key to developing a good habit. The best way to save money for retirement is to stash away a chunk every paycheck. The best way to stop smoking is to refrain from smoking every day. For those who are out of shape and considering the hobby of running, the best way to become and remain a real-deal runner is to run every day as if the length and quality of your life depended on it, because, in a way, it does.

98 | | MAR/APR 2007

There are millions of runner-wannabees and runner-use-to-bees. They liked the idea of running but could never make it a habit. They had a goal of training four days a week but could manage only two or three times because of the weather, or school, or the kids, or headaches, or stress, or the weekend—or whatever. They would run Monday and then for one reason or another miss a planned session on Wednesday and then rationalize while taking the subsequent Friday off that they would start in earnest the following Monday. Then as that Monday arrived, they noticed that it was toward the end of the month, so they would skip this day too and plan to start once again fresh on the first day of the following month. But the following Monday was in December, so then they decided to hold off until the New Year. But that New Year was 1999, so then they decided to hold off until the new millennium. You get the idea. When a novice runner doesn’t try to streak, it is easy for him or her to dream up valid reasons to skip planned runs. In reality, there are very, very few justifications for a streaker to miss his daily run. Some barely acceptable ones are imprisonment, a leg in traction, or a case of the Ebola virus. Weather conditions are not excuses unless the streaker is trapped within the snow of an avalanche flow or is temporarily immobilized in the muddy quagmire of an unexpected tidal bog. (You should still, however, move the upper torso for a while to get at least some cardiovascular exercise for the day.)

Streakers know that it is easier to attain weekly mileage goals by spreading out their training over seven days, rather than six, five, or four. Three miles a day gets them 21 miles per week; running five miles over four days gets them only 20. This is not to say that a runner should run the same distance every day of the week. There ought to be hard days and easy days; it’s just that the easy days don’t have to be total days off. Despite what some of my nonstreaking friends say, there is no such thing as a rest interval. As a general rule, a seven-day running week should consist of one long run, one short easy run, one fast run, and four comfortable runs. Under this approach, weekly mileage of 21 miles would be comprised as follows: three miles, three miles, three miles (fast), three miles, three miles, five miles (slow), and one mile. Sixty weekly miles would break down as eight miles, eight miles, eight miles (fast), eight miles, eight miles, 16 miles (slow), and four miles.

MEET A STREAKER

With all this in mind, let’s take a revealing look at a streaker. Steve Lerner has not missed a day of running since the 10th of November in 1988, when President Reagan was in office, the Seoul Summer Olympics had just finished, and Rain Man was the box office smash hit. According to Steve, he must run at least one continuous mile per day to maintain his streak, although he averages much more than that—about eight miles per day. While he admits that maintaining his streak