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Smeltzer’s Streak

Whitefish business owner approaches 4 years of running every single day

By Tristan Scott
Matthew Smeltzer runs along the Whitefish Trails on April 14, 2016. Greg Lindstrom | Flathead Beacon

When Matthew Smeltzer found out that his wife was going into labor with their second daughter, he laced up his shoes and padded down the driveway for a 3.1-mile run. The 39-year-old Whitefish business owner didn’t want to end his burgeoning record of running at least five kilometers every single day.

To be fair, it was at his wife Eleanor’s behest that he dispatched his daily routine before she began her labor in earnest, and his running habit has never displaced his priorities as a husband, a parent or a business owner.

“By 10 a.m. Ruth was born, and my streak was still alive, too,” Smeltzer said, recalling the day his youngest daughter came into the world. “I weave in my running with the rest of my daily routine.”

At the time, he was less than a year into his streak, but on July 25 of this year he will have mounted 1,460 consecutive days, or four years, running a daily minimum of 3.1 miles.

Smeltzer and hundreds of others live by a simple principle: Run every day. Period. Some of these “streak runners” call themselves “streakers,” and to avoid the forbidden skipped day, they’ve persevered through flu, food poisoning, injury, and other ailments that sideline even the most dedicated athletes.

Smeltzer’s streak was nearly derailed by a skiing-related injury this winter, and he recalls being brought nearly to tears thinking that he’d break his running succession.

But he persevered, managing a slow 5K despite the pain.

The United States Running Streak Association defines a streak as “at least one continuous mile (1.61 kilometers) 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).” Treadmills are permitted, but crutches and canes are not. You can’t run your mile in the pool, either.

Super-dedicated people who go at least a year can get on USRSA’s official list.

It’s not clear how many U.S. streakers are out there, but the association’s numbers are increasing. USRSA’s newsletter listed 86 active people in the spring of 2002, but the website listed 657 in April 2016. The association’s Facebook group started with 40 members in April 2011 and now, with its counterpart Streak Runners International, it has nearly 3,000. Some experts call daily running risky, and researchers haven’t formally studied the practice, but streak runners point to its benefits in their lives.

For Smeltzer, his foray into streaking was as capricious as his decision to adopt the sport as a regular part of his fitness routine.

Admittedly, he has a bit of an addictive personality, and his running routine and strict vegan diet replaced his bygone habits of cigarettes and junk food. He gave up the former while training to climb Mount McKinley, and with that monkey off his back he’s adopted other equally compulsive, albeit healthier, habits.

Sometimes, Smeltzer says, the hurdles can originate from within.

His once-overweight frame now bears the exclamation point of a running junky, and his impenetrably red beard is a familiar sight for locals, who are as likely to see Smeltzer out for his daily run pushing a child’s jogging stroller as they are to see him at the end of a local Turkey Trot, meticulously logging finishing times for the business he founded.

The same year Smeltzer took up running in 2009, he also decided to organize his first race, and with it his new business venture was born – Competitive Timing.

Noticing that there was a dearth of race-timing services both in the Flathead Valley and statewide, he launched his own service, and soon after quit his full-time job at Budget Rental. Since then, he’s been tabbed as the official timing guru for most of Montana’s biggest races, including the Missoula Marathon and the Governor Cup, as well as a host of smaller races.

Competitive Timing now employs four full-time and four part-time employees, and the job has afforded Smeltzer a newfound freedom to run consistently and spend time with his family when he’s not crisscrossing the Treasure State to meticulously document race finishers’ times using an efficient timing-chip system.

Because he burns scores of calories on his daily runs, Smeltzer’s vegan diet means eating intentionally every day, but his regimen of miles is easily supplemented with homemade smoothies, granola, buckwheat growths, and plenty of peanut butter and hummus.

“I’ll eat an entire container of hummus and a jar of peanut butter no problem,” he said on a recent run on the Whitefish Trail.

As for settling on a goal for his running streak, Smeltzer admits that it’s an open-ended endeavor, but figures it would take a broken leg to stop him from continuing.

“It’s become part of me,” Smeltzer said, saying that he logs between 50 and 70 miles per week, but that at the outset of his streak he was logging around 23 miles, often grinding out his obligatory 3.1 miles to the decimal point.

“The thing that a lot of people don’t get is just because I’m a consistent runner doesn’t make me a great runner,” he said. “There are so many athletes that are far better runners. But it wasn’t until my streak started that I really felt like a good runner, so it works for me.”

That doesn’t mean maintaining the streak isn’t without its occasional discomfort.

“It’s fair to say that something hurts all of the time,” he said, though he’s been fortunate to avoid serious injuries. And while he flirts with the idea of a foray into ultramarathoning, he prefers long trail runs in Glacier National Park, and the daily rhythm of his running streak. He also acknowledges that an ultramarathon race of 50 or 100 miles would likely dictate a day of rest, which isn’t acceptable at this stage of his streak.

“Right now it’s all about my streak,” he said.