Running with Raven

by Laura Lee Huttenbach

  * * *

  A QUINTESSENTIAL RAVEN RUN MOMENT for Gringo came on a sunny day in March 1998. A law professor named Tim was running his second mile with Raven when he got the urge to jump over a trashcan. Like John Adams who said, “Every problem is an opportunity in disguise,” steeplechasers like Tim see an obstacle in the path as extra conditioning. Trashcans should be overcome, not avoided.

  Raven, around mile four, told Tim, “You know if you were to hurdle every garbage can left on this beach, you’d probably get Event of the Year.” Then he added, “But nobody’s ever gotten it on their first run with me.” This was all Tim needed to hear.

  “It was a challenge,” recalled Tim in 2014, as he recounted it to me. “Raven didn’t mean it as a challenge, but I took it as a challenge.” (In my observation, however, Raven always means it as a challenge.) So he started hurdling the metal trashcans. In the three-thousand-meter steeplechase that Tim used to compete in, there were forty barriers and seven or eight water pits to jump over. The beach trashcans, Tim figures, “were probably two or three inches shorter than the steeplechase barriers, but a much wider distance across the top.” The garbage cans presented a greater challenge “because I didn’t just have to go up three feet but also carry my body two feet across. If I didn’t clear [the trashcan], my trailing knee would bang against the metal top, which happened more than once.”

  South of 20th Street, every block has a few cans. In the northern, less-crowded beaches, the trashcans are sparser but the sand is softer. Gringo, along for the run, sprinted ahead for crowd control, warning beachgoers in both Spanish and English. “I was telling people in Spanish to step back, that a gentleman was about to jump over the trashcan,” said Gringo, retelling the event in a separate conversation. “They looked at me like, ‘Como? I’m just trying to throw my trash away.’ ”

  Catfood Lady, a coach who was always chasing down plastic bags, was the closest call for interference. “You had to, like, throw her in the trashcan to get her out of the way,” Raven reminded Gringo.

  “I really couldn’t have done it without him,” said Tim of Gringo, who also leveled the tops of the garbage cans, pushing down any overflow. The way back got tougher. “The cans come one right after the other, in soft sand—that’s where it really becomes a ball buster,” observed Tim. His knees were blue from grazing the metal tops, but encouragement from other runners kept his spirits high. Raven kept count, and at 6th Street, Tim cleared trashcan number 281, earning the name, the “Hurdler.”

  The next day, in a lecture hall at the University of Miami, Hurdler had trouble writing on the board. “There was so much pain in my neck, my arms,” he said. Still sore a few weeks after the event, he was watching television when a Nike commercial came on, and its message spoke to him: Pain lasts several minutes, but glory is forever.

  But the glory didn’t end there.

  A year later, teaching in Albuquerque, homesick for Miami and rehabbing a broken fibula, Hurdler received his Event of the Year certificate in the mail from Raven. Holding the certificate, he decided: I’m going to hurdle every garbage can on the beach and get Event of the Year two years in a row. That winter, training in the foothills of New Mexico at an elevation of five thousand feet, Hurdler got ready for spring break.

  On cold, difficult days, Hurdler asked why he was killing himself to jump over hundreds of trashcans on a Raven Run. Even today he can’t fully articulate his motivations, but it reminded him of high school, when he was captain of the cross-country team. “You train so hard—[and] for what?” he asked. “To go to a starting line with your teammates,” he answered. You push through pain on the race and when you finish, “There’s a certain type of glory.” In Albuquerque, he was “wanting to make a comeback and not just accept that I had a broken leg, and I’m getting older, and my best years are behind me.” He paused, then asked, “Does that make any sense?”

  On a sunny afternoon in March—his last day of spring break in Miami—Hurdler showed up at the 5th Street lifeguard stand, surprising Gringo and Raven. By the fifth trashcan, Raven predicted he was going for all eight miles, and Gringo knew the drill. “That was my most challenging run,” says Gringo. “I had to be ahead of him, and he could run pretty fast. I was so afraid he was going to make a mistake because he could’ve had a terrible fall, oh, my gosh.” Cargo Man happened to be in town again and couldn’t believe his luck to witness another Event of the Year.

  After 571 trashcans, Hurdler was approaching the final one when Gringo announced, “Okay, my job is done. You’re all alone for the last basket there. Go ahead.” There, in front of 5th Street, the Hurdler glided over the last trashcan of the eight miles. “Oh, it was phenomenal,” says Gringo. “So exciting—one of the classical events on the run.”

  Raven considers Hurdler’s feat the greatest athletic accomplishment ever performed on the run, and Hurdler says it was the toughest athletic thing he has ever done. The next day, heading back to New Mexico, Hurdler “was such an old man shuffling through that airport. I was in pain for months.” Today, when his students come to his office hours, they see Hurdler’s Event of the Year certificate hanging on the wall. “Of course they have no clue what hurdled eight miles of garbage cans [means]—what the hell?” And Hurdler just nods and says, “Yes, that’s your law professor.”

  * * *

  ACTUALLY THERE WAS A TIE for Event of the Year in 1999. On October 15, Hurricane Irene was supposed to come at seven o’clock at night, but she arrived early—right when Raven, Miracle, Gringo, and Springman were walking toward where the 5th Street lifeguard stand usually stood, but in preparation for the storm, the Beach Patrol had moved the stands inland. While Irene wasn’t Miami’s strongest hurricane—Andrew and Wilma beat her—she was the only one to strike at the start of the Raven Run.

  Wind whipped around at seventy miles per hour. “At that speed, the sand feels like needles when it hits you,” says Raven. “Like someone is scraping off your skin.” The flock headed toward the shoreline, where the sand pecked less at their flesh.

  Gringo recalls, “I felt I was the only one smart enough to be completely covered.” Everyone was wearing at least long pants and a windbreaker, except Raven, who was shirtless in black shorts. “I looked down and thought I was going to see blood all over my legs,” says Raven. “It was extremely painful.”

  Turning at the pier, the wind picked up to eighty-six miles per hour. “With that, you can’t see five feet ahead of you. You can’t open your eyes,” says Raven. “You just feel your way.” Meanwhile Gringo was running like a child—arms stretched out like an airplane, looping in the wind. “Oh, it was tremendous fun,” says Gringo. “We lost Spring because you couldn’t see anything, it’s just gray. But when we got to the pier, he was sitting on that table where you clean fish, with the faucet open, running water all over himself saying, ‘Oh, the water feels so good!’ ”

  After eight, they walked to the public shower on 4th Street, trying to spray off the sand caked to their bodies. “Raven was literally in a sand shell,” says Gringo. “I’m not exaggerating. His whole body was in a hard sand shell.”

  As Raven was laying on the cement underneath the tap, Gringo said, “How about a swim?” Before Raven could answer, Miracle said, “Don’t start with him, because if you challenge him, he’s going to do it.”

  Gringo capitulated. “Okay, no swim.”

  Raven says he found sand tucked into every crevice of his body: “It stuck to me for two weeks.”

  FIFTEEN

  OFF THEIR BUTTS

  Well into the late nineties, most new recruits were by word of mouth or curious observers. The Miami Herald and local news had done a few stories, but Raven didn’t appear in the national spotlight until August 1997, when Runner’s World profiled him in the Human Race column. “As punctual as the sunrise and as sure as the tides, Robert Kraft runs on Miami’s South Beach,” the article begins. “In twenty-two years, his routine may be the only thing that hasn’t changed on this strip of
beach.”

  Raven says that’s when he noticed the first big spike in numbers. One person who read the article was a reporter named George A. Hancock, who was putting together a list of American streak runners. It turned out Raven wasn’t alone in his everyday running habit. In fact, at the time, his streak of 8,000-plus days didn’t even make the top ten. The longest-running streak—more than 10,500 days—belonged to a man named Mark Covert, who started in 1968, seven years before Raven. Eventually the list turned into the United States Running Streak Association (USRSA), of which Raven is a charter member. USRSA bylaws define a streak as “running at least one continuous mile within each calendar day under one’s own body power (without the utilization of any type of health or mechanical aid other than prosthetic devices).” All running surfaces— roads, tracks, and treadmills—meet the criteria, though swimming pools do not.

  Raven is currently ranked number eight. A writer from California named Jon Sutherland owns the longest streak registered on the USRSA, which started in May 1969. Sutherland took over the number one spot from Mark Covert, his running buddy from college, after Covert “pulled a Cal Ripken,” according to the USRSA president Mark Washburne, and voluntarily ended the run.

  “I’ve run every day, but I’ve done it in various states and countries,” Washburne, whose streak is going on twenty-seven years, told me on the phone from his home in New Jersey. “The fact that Raven runs the same course every day—that really separates him from the list. I don’t know anybody else who’s done that.” In 2011, when HBO Real Sports producers called Washburne looking for someone to feature in a segment on obsessive runners, he suggested Raven.

  As of 2015, there were 523 runners with registered streaks and 374 runners on the retired streak list. “Professionally, it’s a diverse group,” continued Washburne. “There’s a lot of teachers and track coaches, obviously. I even saw a truck driver in there. You gotta wonder how he does it. And there’s a lot of doctors.”

  “Have any of the doctors written about the consequences of a running streak?” I asked.

  “Well any article you read about running will say you need to take a day off, but the truth is nobody’s ever really done a scientific study on streak running.” He hopes, one day, someone will. It annoys him when reporters refer to streak runners as obsessed. “We like to say we’re dedicated. We prefer a positive spin. I mean, he’s doing something healthy, like brushing your teeth every day.”

  The year before, Washburne had run in fifty-six races. One was the Boston Marathon, his ninth time. “This year I’m not doing as many,” he said. I asked why. “I started dating someone, and she’s a runner, but she thinks I’m a little crazy with all the races.” At the end of our conversation, he said he hoped to make a Raven Run soon. “I need to get one of those nicknames.”

  Raven enjoys the camaraderie of the association, and he thinks it helps to motivate people. “Streak running is becoming really popular,” says Raven. “It’s a good thing. It gets people off their butts to do something every day. It pushes people. It gives them a reason not to take a day off.”

  On New Year’s Eve in 2014, I met Stephen DeBoer, a dietician from Minnesota whose forty-four-year streak (started 6/7/71) ranks number three on the list. He was in town to run with Raven and deliver an award on behalf of the USRSA. DeBoer—shirtless and wearing high white socks and short black shorts—ran next to me for several miles. He bobbed his head when he ran, like a pecking chicken, but his graceful, steady gait looked like he was on top of an elliptical machine. DeBoer echoed Washburne’s pet peeve. He hates that everyone writes off streak runners as being OCD, though he admits he is OCD himself. “The way I look at it is everyone’s got passions, and I think running is a pretty good one,” he told me. He credits the streak with providing stability in his life. “The highs are still high, but the lows seem more manageable,” he said. Consistent running, he believes, lowers the rate of depression and provides as many emotional benefits as physical.

  I asked him the first question that most people ask Raven: “What was your hardest day?”

  He had two. When he broke his ankle stepping into a gopher hole on a trail run in Minnesota, the doctor put a walking boot on his leg and told him he could bear weight according to pain tolerance. He tolerated pain running at least a mile every day for six weeks. “It was slow,” he conceded. “But I did it.” He thinks running helped his recovery. A kidney stone caused his second hardest day, but, after surgery, the pain disappeared quickly. “What did your doctor say when you told him you were going to run that afternoon?” I asked.

  “I didn’t tell him,” he said.

  Unlike Raven, DeBoer travels and keeps his streak alive in a variety of locations. He also competes in marathons. “It’s funny, though,” he said. “I still get a little sore after I run a marathon, so the following day, I only run one mile.”

  After eight miles with Raven, DeBoer became “Tundra Star.”

  The next day—January 1, 2015—DeBoer presented Raven with the 2015 Runner of the Year award on behalf of the USRSA, and Raven’s streak turned forty. The award ceremony was at the 5th Street lifeguard stand. Before DeBoer made his speech, he shook Raven’s hand. “Hey, you showed up,” he joked.

  When we started the eight miles, I said, “Raven, I want you to know yesterday was a record for both of us.” I had run eight miles with him two days in a row, making it my all-time longest streak of running eight miles every day.

  “Wow,” he said. “You doing eight today?” I wasn’t. “You hear that, Tundra Star?” said Raven, turning to DeBoer on his right. “Our streaks are safe.”

  “You never know,” said DeBoer. “She may wake up tomorrow and have to run and then—it just happens.”

  VII

  CAMARADERIE

  You tap into a pool of great people, all professions, all ages, all cultures, all fitness levels, all sizes and shapes . . . It gets you energized, opens up your mind, and gets me thinking about my own life. You enjoy the “here and now.”

  —Transporter, from Germany, 11 runs

  Miami is a city where you could live here for years and never know anyone. But this is something you can do every day—the exact same thing—and meet different people.

  —Bloody Wolf, a French scientist and marathon runner

  Raven is unequivocally, universally welcoming, providing companionship and camaraderie while on a run in an absolutely beautiful location. What could be better?

  —Chocolate Chip, 723 runs

  I run with Raven for the—how do you say it in English—camaradería?

  —Dos Equis, a boat builder from the Dominican Republic

  Knowing I’m not alone, that there’s people here that want to be with me, that motivates me. If I had to come out and run by myself, I don’t know if I could.

  —Raven

  SIXTEEN

  TRUE STORY LORY

  Raven has given identities to more than 2,500 people and as may already be evident, nicknames are a big part of the Raven Run. Usually on the first run, when he is confident you will make eight, Raven conducts a little interview. He asks about past nicknames, hometown, work, diet, hobbies, passions, and obsessions. By virtue of knowing that you will walk away from the experience with a new name, people tend to reveal more of themselves on the run. They want to get a favorable pseudonym, which they wear every time they show up. You have to be careful what you say on the first run, because any pleasing word to Raven could become your identity.

  One time, my friend Randy, who is a swim coach, happened to talk about crabbing, and he remarked turkey necks made good bait. “Turkey Neck,” repeated Raven. “That’d be a good nickname.” After our protests, Raven finally agreed to call him “Kickboard.”

  Nicknames are ubiquitous and as a result many of us never learn each other’s real names. Sometimes this can make for awkward interactions outside the beach context. Raven, whose preferred means of communication is still the U.S. Postal Service, sends me letters addressed
to White Lightning. (The postman has yet to report me as a drug dealer. Letters, for the record, are handwritten in legible cursive, and he sends at least one letter to someone every other day. He always closes with, “Run Free.” Sometimes he writes, “Love, Raven.” They come from the heart. They make me smile and say, “Aw, Raven!”)

  One time, a group of us wanted to visit Tony Gulliver, Raven’s old neighbor I met at the picnic. He’d recently moved to assisted living in Hialeah, and I called the social worker to get visitation hours. “Who can I tell him is coming to visit?” asked the social worker.

  I hesitated. If I said Laura Lee, Tony wouldn’t know me, and she might think he had dementia. So I had to say, “White Lightning, Yellow Rose, and Raven.”

  One reason that I love the nickname tradition is because you are guaranteed a story when you ask the origins. For instance, on a run in June 2013, I met Trusty, a cop from Garfield, New Jersey, who got his name when he told Raven, “I work with trusties in jail.” We were heading north to 47th Street when I asked, “You got any good cop stories?”

  “I’ll have to think about that,” he said. About a mile later, he said he had a couple.

  Once, at the police station, a guy walked up to Trusty’s desk and threw down a brown paper package, setting off a flurry of white powder. The man was livid, and Trusty took cover under his desk. “I want this man arrested,” the guy shouted. “He was supposed to sell me a kilo, and he sold me a half-kg.” Trusty poked his head out from under the desk. “Is this cocaine?” he asked. The man said yes. “So you bought a kilo of cocaine from your dealer, but he gave you a half-kg.” Again the man said yes, and Trusty had to arrest him. (When I retold this story to the Giggler, he predictably laughed, then observed, “It just goes to show you everyone wants justice.”)