Kim Bellard reached 100,000 miles (April 7, 2018)

Kim Bellard
Cincinnati OH
DOB: 8-55
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I hit 100,000 miles on April 7, 2018, at age 62. A few years ago I used all my existing logbooks to create a spreadsheet that tracks how much I ran on each day for all those years (populating it was not an insignificant task – some 18,000+ entries!). So I’ve got a fairly precise total.

I started running in 1969. Some modest success in cross-country and track in junior high/high school cemented my dedication to it, but I gradually realized that I enjoyed training on my own to team
workouts. So I stopped racing in 1973 (except for 2 road races I did in the 1990’s as a lark). I’ve done almost all my running alone, on the roads, dealing with the vagaries of Midwest weather, and, for most of the year, pre-dawn. It’s rare I even see other runners.

I don’t take days off unless I physically can’t run. Which, unfortunately, has been more than I’d like (it has worked out to about 5% of days overall). I’ve had the gamut of overuse injuries, had to have foot surgery, and broke bones several times on runs. In the last few years my hips haven’t worked quite right, making just putting one foot in front of the other no longer a simple task. Then last year I had a heart attack, which was about the last thing I ever would have expected. That caused me to take 2 months off, the longest I’d ever not run. I seriously considered giving up running, but did cautiously start again.

To be honest, what I’m doing now is not something I once would have considered running. I can’t run the kind of mileage I could even a couple years ago. I’m slower and more awkward than I could have ever imagined. On bad days I question why I’m still doing it. But I’m still out there every day.