ATASCADERO — Former Atascadero police commander Joe Allen has run 2758.6 miles in 365 days.
"Over the entire year, May 29th to May 29th... I ended up averaging 7 and a half miles per day," Allen said.
He dedicated this past year to running a 10K a day and he's kept running after hitting the year mark.
"It's been kinda my thing, I didn't want to miss a day. There's been a few, my wife can attest, that I was so close, Mr.Pierce too - he would ask how I'm feeling today, I don't know how I'm going to make the 6.2 but I'm going to," Allen added.
It's become a tradition for his long-time friend Dick Pierce and his wife Wendy to wave from their balcony at Joe running around the lake in Atascadero, cheering for him every step of the way.
"If you think about it 6.2, 365 days in a row without stopping, that's quite a feet...I stop him and make him rest a minute or two," Pierce said.
Allen believes discipline is the biggest key to his commitment to run every day.
"With my discipline, I ran in the snow, I was in Scottsdale for spring training and ran in a hail storm, I didn't expect a hailstorm it came out of nowhere, in the rain, the hot sun... Didn't matter what we were doing, when we were doing it, it was something I had to do."
While these last 15 months have been difficult for many, Allen is a prime example of someone who made the most of his time during the uncertainty we were living in during the pandemic.
"If I did it for anything, I did it to inspire other people that guess what if you have the time, get out there and hit the run whether its walking, biking hiking...Because sitting at home isn't going to work," Allen said.
