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12 n e w h a v e n B I Z | J a n u a r y / F e b r u a r y 2 0 1 9 n e w h a v e n b i z . c o m T R E N D I N G F red Murolo of Cheshire is a lawyer specializing in litiga- tion. He's a busy guy, but in his precious spare time he finds time to run, a pastime he began in the 1970s as an undergrad at Connecticut College. Now 62, he's still pretty committed to running, and hardly ever misses a day out on the Farmington Canal trail, his daily route of choice. Actually, the last day he missed was Dec. 29, 1981. Murolo just completed his 37th year as a "streaker," as it's known in runner jargon. ose are road war- riors who never take a day off from running. As in, never. Neither rain, nor snow, nor sickness, nor injury, nor I-just-don't-feel-like-it malaise can keep these indefatigable trek- kers from their appointed rounds. For Murolo, it's more than 13,500 days in a row. And counting. Murolo puts in something like 80 miles in a typical week training week -- that adds up to an hour and a half every morning. Except that he's not "training" at all — he's just living. With that kind of mileage, you'd probably peg Murolo as a mara- thoner. Not really: since his first marathon (New York City, the world's largest) on a "lark" at age 21, he's run fewer than two dozen of the 26.2-mile torture-fests. at might seem like a lot to the average sedentary schlemiel, but it turns out that ultramarathons, in particular 100-mile races, are more his thing. Last month Murolo competed in the Ancient Oaks 100-Mile Endurance Run, his 36th 100-miler. e event took place in Titusville, Fla. on Dec. 15-16. (Note the double date: For most runners, covering 100 miles requires more than a single day. Murolo finished in 31:22:50 (that's hours) including bathroom breaks, meals, etc.) Like nearly all of his fellow "streakers," Murolo didn't con- sciously set out to run every day; he just did it, until he no longer had a choice when he woke up in the morning: e streak owned him. "I just fell in love with the feeling of running," he says. Some love endures. Today Murolo's 37 years represent the longest streak anyone seems to know of, at least in Connecticut. But he has competed against at least one runner who has put in more than 50 years of daily running without an interruption -- a half-century of backaches, blisters and ibuprofin. "Actually, the most extreme example I know of are women who have run through childbirth," he says. "ey ran in the morning, went into labor, had the baby and ran the next day before midnight. "I don't think I would have done that," he adds. Oh, and in his extra spare time, Murolo is also an author. His first novel, the "semi- autobiographical" Running Home, self-published last summer. Its title provides a hint as to the subject matter: It's about an aimless young grad student who decides to run every day to impose structure on his life. "It's kind of a metaphor for just getting going in your life," he says. But when on earth does a busy litigator who tosses off 100-milers like a day (or two) at the beach find time to write fiction? "I write while I'm running," Murolo explains. n Running To Live, Living To Run Murolo on his daily crack-of-dawn training run, and at right competing in one of the ultra-marathons he relishes such as last month's 100-mile torture-fest in Florida. D O W N T I M E

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