FORT WORTH, Texas — Bill Anderson's running shoes have carried him through the fog along the rim of the Grand Canyon and beneath the lights of the Las Vegas Strip, through Central Park with temperatures in the teens and across the scorching Badwater Basin of Death Valley.
But how this 73-year-old retiree found himself among the rarest group of runners in the world starts, on most days, at the front door of his home, on a quiet street in southwest Fort Worth.
Easing down the front sidewalk, Anderson settles into a slow jog for about half a block, reaches a neighborhood park, and then makes two laps around a pond, passing dog walkers and ducks. One mile, plodded along "very slowly," as Anderson will admit. On its own, the run is nothing special.
Except that he's reached that same distance – at least one mile – every day since Sept. 27, 1976, a streak of 15,450 days. That's good for eighth in the world, according to the United States Running Streak Association, which yes, exists, and tracks the streaks and updates the rankings daily.
The longest active streak belongs to Jon Sutherland, 68, of West Hills, Calif., who started with a run on May 26, 1969. The only Texan ahead of Anderson is Alex T. Galbraith, 68, of Houston, whose streak began on Dec. 22, 1971.
The top streak runners aren't professional athletes; they're accountants and writers and attorneys who happened to start running back in the 60s and 70s and never stopped.
Anderson was an executive at Lockheed Martin. He and the other runners report their streaks to the USRSA on an honor system, confirming quarterly that their streaks are still intact. There are two requirements to make the published list: Run at least one mile, or 1.61 kilometers, within each calendar day. Then do it for at least one year.
Anderson made a few rules of his own. His runs must be completed outdoors; no climate-controlled miles on a treadmill. On top of weathering the extremes of Texas temperatures, he's dodged lightning and evaded a pack of wild dogs.
Anderson also requires himself to get dressed for a run – that means lacing up a pair of running shoes (Brooks are his go-to) and wearing running clothes.
"I feel like if it's not an intentional run, it doesn't count as a run," Anderson said. "You can't count just running out to your mailbox and back."
When Anderson discovered the list in 2001, nearly 30 years into his streak, he was surprised to learn he only ranked 18th out of 113 runners. As the decades-long streaks ahead of him ended, Anderson climbed his way into the top 10.
Today, the active U.S. streak list includes more than 1,300 runners, a good bulk of whom have streaks of five years or less. Plenty of those streaks began on New Year's Day.
Anderson's didn't, but he'll gladly take credit for his streak as a New Year's resolution made good, year after year.
"I've broken a bunch of others," Anderson said, "but I've kept this one."
'You gotta keep going if you get that far into it'
But he didn't start the streak as some grand plan for self-betterment. In fact, he had no plan at all.
He simply went out for a run one Monday, along Trail Lake Drive to Altamesa Boulevard. He cut east on Altamesa to South Hulen Street, and then back home, a roughly two-mile route through the outer reaches of Fort Worth, remarkable now only because of the runs that followed.
Anderson squeezed in a run the rest of the days that week in September 1976. He kept at it, making it through October, streak intact. November and December passed. When the calendar turned to 1977, as Gerald Ford's presidency wound down and Rod Stewart topped the Billboard charts, Anderson was nearing 100 straight days of running.
"You gotta keep going if you get that far into it," he said.
And he did, avoiding the nagging injuries that fell many runners and blocking out the everyday excuses: Too hot, too busy, too cold, too dark, too windy.
There was the occasional close call. On a trip to Taiwan, he arrived about 11:30 p.m., with no run on his ledger for the day. It was dark, and he had just landed in a country where he couldn't read the street signs.
"So I did the natural thing and went and ran," Anderson said.
Other near-misses happened from his couch. There was the night he returned home from a party and fell asleep in the living room. About 10:30 p.m., his wife, Lauren, woke him up.
"Have you run yet?" she asked.
He hadn't, and midnight was approaching.
"I got up, took off my PJs, put on my running shoes and went out and ran," Anderson said.
Another day down, run streak intact.
'My daughter just would not let it go'
Nothing, however, pushed the streak to the brink like a two-day stint in 2012.
Dogged by fatigue, Anderson scheduled an appointment with a doctor. His wife, Lauren – always a supporter of the streak – suggested a quick run, just in case the doctors kept him longer than expected. Anderson got in his run and went to the hospital, where doctors diagnosed with him appendicitis and wheeled him into emergency surgery.
"The streak is over," Anderson's doctor declared.
His family figured otherwise.
The next day, Anderson's daughter mapped out a quick loop in the meditation garden at the hospital – outside, of course, according to Anderson's rules. Thirty laps, they calculated, equaled a mile. Anderson, down an appendix and attached to an IV drip, threw on a pair of running shoes and got moving. His daughter ran alongside him, wheeling the IV machine. Thirty laps later, the streak went from nearly getting "blown up," Anderson said, to as safe as ever.
"My daughter just would not let it go," Anderson said.
The near-misses and scenic runs, for a streak as long as Anderson's, have been rare, a few hundred scattered among thousands of monotonous treks. Anderson's main route – down the block and around the neighborhood pond – is a path he's run, by his count, about 10,000 times.
"A lot of runs are kind of boring," Anderson said, "other than keeping track of the weather and noticing what the wildflowers are doing."
Over time, Anderson's pace slowed. He once ran a marathon in three hours and 30 minutes, a clip of eight minutes per mile. Now, his pace has nearly doubled, a fact that frustrates him.
"But I like getting out," he said. "I like having the streak...If you've got 40 years invested in it, it's the first priority. You figure out some way."
