Jerry KotsovosCamas, WA
D.O.B.: May, 1946
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I was overweight during the latter portion of my childhood and during my college years. However, wanting to lose weight, on July 19,1975 I started counting the number of miles I ran each day in order to motivate myself in my attempt to lose weight. Since July 19, 1975, I have run more than 127,000 miles (a number of miles more than equal to half-way to the moon and more than equal to five times the circumference of the Earth.) I try to run everyday and my longest streak of unmissed days occurred during my late 60's and early 70's when I ran on each of 1,943 consecutive days (a period of time lasting more than five years). It was a streak of runs which included runs in, in successive years, Canada, Panama, Egypt, Costa Rica, and Spain as well as runs in the United States. (When I am not running in my hometown, and, therefore, running an unmarked course, I calculate mileage run by adding several minutes to my typical minutes per mile so that I can be sure that I am not overcounting my mileage.)
I have been recording my number of miles run each day since 1975. Indeed, my number of miles run since 1989 have been recorded on Runner's World annual calendars. When I started running at 29-years-of-age, I would not have believed that I would be running for more than forty years or running marathons. However, several months after I started running, former Olympic marathoner Kenny Moore, like myself a graduate of the University of Oregon, won Coos Bay, Oregon's annual 18 miles race titled "Circle-the-Bay" and, after the race, told me that if I can run 18 miles then I can run a marathon. I ran my first marathon several months after my conversation with Kenny Moore and have continued running marathons to the extent I have run marathons in six decades of my life. (My best marathon time was the 2:56:12 I ran in the 1978 Boston Marathon.)