Eugene man’s running streak stretches more than 35 years

John Wallace of Eugene has run at least a mile per day for 12,978 days … and counting. 

That’s 35 and a half years. 

Wallace is 49, so his streak has lasted nearly 75 percent of his life. He and his father started their running streaks together when Wallace was 13. His dad’s streak went for more than 33 years, ending in 2023, when he had a stroke.

An emergency appendectomy during college was the most serious threat to Wallace’s streak. But he had already run on the day of his surgery and the next day, recovering, he somehow managed a mile. 

Wallace has trained for and competed at races of all distances. He ran across the U.S. when he was 25, from Washington to Georgia.

More recently, as his life has gotten busier, Wallace has stayed closer to a mile per day. He is an e-commerce specialist for a company in Michigan, and he has two sons, ages 17 and 12. Sometimes they’ll run with him (and push the pace). 

Other days, he waits until his house settles down to head out alone for his daily mile, sometimes as late as 11:30 or 11:45 p.m., and takes it at a relaxed 10-minute pace. 

“It’s just quiet then,” Wallace said. “Nice and calm.” 

Wallace likely has one of the longest streaks of any kind in Lane County. But all around him, residents of the area maintain various consecutive days, weeks, months and years of doing something. 

Word of Wallace’s streak came to Lookout Eugene-Springfield via one of his neighbors, Mark Weinrott. Weinrott had read Lookout’s call for streaks in our afternoon newsletter, after I had recently passed 200 consecutive days of walking 10,000 steps or more (now up to 216) and was feeling pretty good about that. 

But the responses we received from readers made 200 days look paltry. 

Duolingo, the popular language app, encourages streaks. 

Jay Moseley has one going for 1,465 days, studying Spanish. Pat Bryan recently hit 103 days, also learning Spanish. “Duolingo is addictive in a low-key way,” she wrote to Lookout, adding, “Streaks are great motivators.”  

Tricia Hedin is up to more than 280 days, learning Italian. 

“The other day, I borrowed a 2023 movie from the public library that is in Italian with English subtitles, called ‘There’s Still Tomorrow,’” she wrote. “I watched it and found that I really still can’t understand what someone speaking Italian is saying. Maybe a word here or there. Ha!” 

Hedin doesn’t have an end goal in mind. “All I know is that I’ve got a streak going and I don’t want to mess it up,” she said. 

Tim Blood has been to every Oregon Country Fair since 1972, when it was still the Renaissance Fair. Jeff Spoor has seen every Super Bowl on television. (The first Super Bowl was in 1967.) 

Angela Towle has read for at least an hour a day since the pandemic in 2020, more than 1690 days. She reads all genres and especially loves romance and thrillers. She goes for a mix of audiobooks, reading on her Kindle and hard copy books; she usually has three different books going at once. Her highest book count was 157 in 2021. Although her pace has slowed somewhat, she’s already finished 24 this year. 

Her favorite since her streak started? That would be “Perfect Strangers” by J.T. Geissinger. 

Jensina Hawkins has a reverse streak. For the past two and a half years, she’s taken at least two and a half days per week off of Facebook and Instagram, usually on the weekends. “Sometimes it feels so good to be unplugged that I extend those two days to three, five, or even a full week,” she wrote. 

Then there’s Whitney Donielson. Her streak is not exactly a streak. It’s more like an ongoing project. 

She’s got a goal to visit every city-owned and county-owned park in Lane County — and she’s well on her way. 

Like Towle, Donielson started her streak during the pandemic, April 2020, to be exact. For the next year, she visited 110 of Eugene’s city parks, taking a walk through or around it. She’ll snap a photo with the park’s sign (if there is one) and add it to a spreadsheet she’s created, with a few sentences reviewing it. 

Now she’s chipping away at other towns and cities in Lane County. Donielson has done all four of Creswell’s parks, 26 out of 45 in Springfield, and several in Coburg, Cottage Grove, and Junction City. 

Other parks await her visit, from Oakridge to Florence. 

The county is wide. The streaks continue.